


The Regicide

by astrokath



Series: F'ren's High Reaches [4]
Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: Aliens Made Them Do It, Attempted Murder, Bad Decisions, Consent Issues, Emotional Roller Coaster, F/M, Gen, Head Injury, Hears All Dragons, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Impression, M/M, Manipulation, Mating Flight, Mind Games, Minor Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Power Dynamics, Serious Injuries, Substance Abuse, Suicide, Threadfall, Time Travel, Weyr Politics, Whump, Worldbuilding, impaired judgment, pregnancy loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-30 06:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 47
Words: 299,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrokath/pseuds/astrokath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Weyrwoman Maenida comes to grief during Threadfall, the repercussions are disastrous. The Fighting Wings suffer crippling losses, and the Lower Caverns are left in turmoil. Weyrleader Sh'vek's options are limited...but that only makes it all the more essential for him to keep a tight hold on the reins of power.</p><p>Rahnis of Ista, brought in to assist junior weyrwoman Delene, soon discovers that her new responsibilities will be even harder to manage than she imagined. Torn from her weyrmate, she struggles to find a workable solution that will make everything right...though it will, inevitably, exact a price.</p><p>But for some people, it's not all bad news. He may have been given leadership of the worst Wing ever to grace the skies of Pern, but for bronzerider F'ren the situation offers only opportunity. Turning his Wing around well enough to make a difference for the better is only the beginning: F'ren has no intention of resting on his laurels, no matter how hard his Weyrleader tries to stymie him.</p><p>Thread, however, cares little for human politics. All Thread does is kill.</p><p>[Set in the 5th Pass with a fully original character cast. All stories in this series can be read independently.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a fluffy story, and the major AO3 warnings I've flagged cover the worst of it...but it IS Pern, and Pernese dragons are what they are. Canon-compliant consent issues are dealt with on-screen later on in the story, people make dubious choices, and the power dynamics between the POV characters become very unbalanced at times. I'm choosing not to warn for anything more specific than this right now, but if you're concerned about anything more specific - or if you come across something that you think really ought to be warned for up-front - please drop me a line.
> 
> Updates will be made once or twice a week, keeping pace with the internal timeline.

**Chapter One**

 

 

_Green winged as the grasses_  
 _that Thread would devour_  
 _I hear my love call out my name._  
 _Green wings take them skyward_  
 _as Threadfall draws nearer_  
 _I watch my love's dragon a-flame_  
 _Green wings, yes, so many_  
 _with Thread seared and over._  
 _I see my love never again._

**Early morning, 22.10.34**

**The High Reaches**

 

The assembled Wings of High Reaches Weyr appeared from _between_ as one, high above the rolling hills south of Pars Hold. The sun had only recently crested the Western Mountains, and the eastern sky was streaked by haphazard bands of cirrus, tinged with pink and orange in the morning light. It was an undeniably beautiful sight. On any other day, it would have been enough to lift F'ren's spirits...but with Threadfall imminent, the skies of Pern held little power to delight.

Far to the west, a thicker bank of clouds loomed darkly on the horizon. F'ren had – inevitably – been one of the sweepriders sent out in the hours before dawn, and he knew full well that the clouds extended all the way to the coast. They'd be fighting in it from the Fall's midway point right until its very end, and he wasn't looking forward to it one bit.

The last anxious minutes spent waiting for Threadfall to start were _never_ pleasant. Some riders filled the time with final checks and adjustments of their harness; others with messages passed back and forth amongst the dragons, ranging from heartfelt encouragement to the most mundane gossip from the Weyr's Lower Caverns. F'ren had never seen much point to all the mental chatter. His bronze was as fit and healthy as ever, and they made a more than capable team. Patting yourself on the back wouldn't make Thread fall any faster, nor get the job of flaming it finished any quicker or better. He tucked a stray wisp of dark hair back beneath his helmet before stretching down to double-check the tension in Trath's primary strap, and then his own safety line. Everything was in order...or, more accurately, everything he had any control over. When it came to fighting Thread, that amounted to very little.

Trath was busy making subtle adjustments to the trim of his wings, adapting his flight as Flamestrike Wing's turn brought its dragons fully into the path of the strong wind blowing down from the mountains. Leaving his dragon to it, F'ren looked up at the sky, which was already showing the first signs of falling thread. Even half obscured by clouds, there was no mistaking that dark haze high in the east, nor the pale glow that preceded its passage westwards across the heavens. That was where the falling Threads first lengthened into bright, hot strands of death, up in the thinnest reaches of the atmosphere, where a dragon couldn't breathe enough to fly, let alone fight. That was where the shape of the day's fall would be decided, as the fast currents of air twisted the falling ribbons unpredictably, sometimes clumping them awkwardly, and sometimes barely affecting them at all, leaving them to drop as steadily as rain. You couldn't tell for sure what you were in for until the leading edge was upon you, but the weather conditions alone wouldn't make the coming Fall an easy one.

 _Ormaith chides the Wing for our sloppy formation,_ Trath warned his rider.

F'ren quickly double-checked their own position, and found nothing amiss with it. The Weyrleader had chosen the lower south-east quadrant for Flamestrike, directing the action from the central point of the Wing's inverted vee while his two Wingseconds led the attack from either end. Trath's assigned place in the formation was midway down the inner arm, just where the Wing was most vulnerable to losing shape when tiring blues and greens started bunching together. Any mistakes they made today would be glaringly obvious.

F'ren had no intention of making any more than he already had.

Bracing himself against his straps, he leaned out sideways and checked the line of dragons to Trath's left. _Tell Oth she needs to ease back a little,_ he asked his bronze _._

Then, out of a habit that he couldn't bring himself to shake off, he looked up and behind him to inspect the other Wings. Today, the Weyr was flying inverted vees on both the upper and lower Flights, with each of the fighting Wings marking one corner of a cube. The individual formations themselves looked good, but Thunderclap Wing's position in the awkward north-east quadrant was visibly off. Each Wing was to hold its station throughout the fall, ascending or descending as one unit. Occasionally, they'd change direction for a tangential sweep, the two arms of the vee peeling away dragon by dragon and reforming again in a smooth, well-practised manoeuvre. Standard stuff, really, keeping the Wing within a fixed volume of sky that kept pace with either the leading edge or trailing edge. It wasn't the choice F'ren would've made, given the chance...but then again, it _had_ been his own choices that had got him where he was today.

He'd had more than three turns of this now.

Oh, there was no pleasing some people – F'ren had figured _that_ out a very long time ago – but some days, he felt himself losing sight of the reasons he even tried. What was the point of competing with Sh'vek's sycophants for rank, only to lose it again for the most specious of reasons? If merit alone was enough to earn his Wingleader's knots back, he'd have done so thrice over by now. Instead, he'd spent the last three turns as just another wingrider, denied any rank or responsibility and always, always, under the Weyrleader's watchful eyes. Three turns too many. Three _sharding_ turns of Sh'vek _always_ appearing at precisely the right moment to make an example out of them, like that very morning, when F'ren's sacks of firestone had – quite mysteriously – all been filled with rocks of the wrong size and quality, making it well nigh impossible for Trath to build up a decent flame. F'ren worried that one day something would go wrong and he wouldn't have _time_ to set it right. You'd think the man really _did_ have eyes in the back of his head...or something.

_F'ren, I don't like the look of this Threadfall. I think we'll need eyes like that today._

Not liking the unease he could feel in his dragon's mind, F'ren squinted towards the leading edge with a sigh. There was an intervening band of cirrus, painfully bright in the sun's glare, and he couldn't really make out much detail. _Sorry. Lend me your eyes?_

_I can do better than that. Azalath is sharing what she sees with me._

F'ren closed his eyes. They were watering badly in the fiercely cold wind, and he didn't need the added disorientation of seeing two viewpoints at once. The image from the distant green quickly came into focus: F'ren ignored the brown and the blue flying beside her, and concentrated on the rapidly approaching leading edge of Threadfall, and the shifting patterns in the looming grey mass beyond it. Trath was right, F'ren decided as he let the image slip away: it did look like a bad one. You couldn't always tell, but you did learn to trust your own instincts, and those of your dragon especially. Like a flash of lightning before a thunderclap, sometimes the dragons just _knew_ when things were going to go badly. The dread was infectious – perhaps even strong enough to be a cause in itself – but it wasn't something you could ignore. F'ren could feel that dread in Trath's mind today and, if he was honest with himself, it scared him a little.

This would be a bad Fall.

 _You're remembering something you read, aren't you_?

Trath had picked up on a thought that F'ren hadn't even realised he was thinking. The memory of a long day, two and a half turns ago – one of the few he'd spent in Ista Weyr's records room until Weyrwoman Vallenka had put a stop to his visits. The other riders of Sh'vek's Wing had been enjoying the varied delights of Tillek Hold's spring Gather. Denied that particular privilege, F'ren had instead spent the day exploring Ista's archives, poring over the chilling descriptions of Threadfalls from centuries past.

 _Just some good advice,_ he told his bronze _. It might not be as bad as it looks. 'Threadfall can_ never _be predicted_ ,' he quoted from memory. ' _Each fall is inherently unique; the natural pattern laid down from Pass to Pass by time and terrain is inevitably spoiled by the slightest movements of the air, making the whole an unknowable challenge until the very moment you meet it in the air.'_

 _I could have told you that, you know._ The bronze made a few more minor adjustments to his wings, steadying their passage through the air; in his eagerness to fight, they'd started to drift out of position after all.

F'ren hoped they'd caught their error quickly enough; giving the Weyrleader more stone to flame them with was the last thing they needed right now. _I learned more than just that. Different ways of fighting, how best to re-stack and layer the Wings in difficult conditions, all sorts of things._ He'd had more faith in his dreams, back then. Dreams that next time, Trath would catch the _right_ queen. Dreams of making a difference, of all the injustices in his life being flamed away. But dreams were flighty things, as unreliable as firelizards. You couldn't make them real simply by wishing for them

 _We were good Wingleaders, weren't we_?

F'ren sighed. _Could've done better I suppose, but I always thought so._ And now here they were, back amongst the rank and file, with only the most cursory briefing from Sh'vek immediately prior to departing the Weyr: stock formations for each Wing; every dragon put in his or her place. Knowing which Wing would start out where was all very well, but it barely scratched the surface of Sh'vek's deeper strategy for the Fall, whatever it was: the Wingleaders and their seconds met behind the closed doors of the council chamber these days. There was no time to properly _prepare_ : to talk over the likely problems raised by weather and terrain; to go over the likely response of their nearest wingmates to different patterns of strands or clumps; to fine-tune fall-back formations and shift-patterns for the smaller greens and blues. The rest of the Weyr might place too much trust in Sh'vek's leadership to care about – or even see – what they were missing, but that didn't make it any less an abuse of that trust in F'ren's eyes.

That was what F'ren missed most about his former rank: being involved, knowing what was going on, and having some hope of influencing the way the Weyr fought thread for the better. Now, his only power in that respect was no more and no less than that of every other dragonpair in the Weyr: to fly where they were told and char as much Thread as they could. Even there, Sh'vek had allowed Flamestrike Wing to develop worrying levels of competitiveness, and it had quickly spilled over into the rest of the Weyr's fighting Wings. Shard it, it _shouldn't_ be about what an individual dragon could do, who had the broadest or longest flames! All that truly mattered was how many dragons were still fit to fly by the end of the fall, and how much thread you'd let through. But F'ren wasn't really in a position to argue the point. Increased competition supposedly meant that every dragon tried to excel himself, and the Weyr and Pern would both prosper accordingly. Huh. Competition and prosperity. Sh'vek certainly had _very_ clear cut ideas about how far he'd let that particular idea fly.

But now wasn't the best time to dwell on such things. F'ren rolled his shoulders and shook his head, loosening up both mind and body, and took a few last welcome breaths of clean, fresh, freezing air. Soon, the Weyr's dragons would all be flaming hard, and the air would thicken with fumes and ash. The upper Wings were close now; contact surely only seconds away. Just enough time for one final check of his fighting straps and the hang of their spare sacks of firestone against Trath's neck. All around them, other riders were doing the same things. F'ren could feel Trath's readiness in his mind, and a faint rumbling in the dragon's body. The whole Weyr seemed to fall still and silent in instinctive anticipation of Ormaith's bellow, and then, hearing it, surged forward.

_WE FIGHT!_

_Steady now, Trath,_ F'ren warned. The blues and greens to either side of them were enthusiastically matching Trath's pace, but it was several beats a minute faster than the rest of the Wing were flying. _You really don't want to outfly Ormaith today._

Ahead, the Threads were almost upon them. First contact was always made on the upper levels. Trath supplied one last image from Azalath as the green flamed her first Thread of the fall, and then at last it was their own turn.

Once the leading edge had passed overhead, the fighting was all that mattered. All thoughts of tactics disappeared from F'ren's mind, because the fall _was_ a bad one, right from the start, with no chance for any respite. The first tangle he saw up close was too big for the smaller dragons flying several places ahead of Trath in the Wing's vee to manage. Tundreth tried to flame it first, catching only the lower third before his momentum carried him past. Denchath was next in line, but the weather wasn't cooperating today at all, and before she could flame it she was blown off course by a gust. The green had barely enough room to blink _between_ before she risked hitting another falling Thread.

 _Let Oth take the singleton; the clump's ours,_ F'ren decided.

 _She agrees,_ Trath said, slipping out of formation. Three heavy wingbeats were enough to catch up with the partially charred tangle. Trath belched flame enthusiastically, burning the rest of it to harmless ash. That done, they blinked _between_ to rejoin the Wing a little behind their usual position. That usually gave them enough space to spot their next target, but the smaller dragons to either side were already becoming too overworked to take out every Thread that fell between them.

 _Oth warns us_! Trath shrieked, frantically skipping _between_ for a second time, attempting to avoid the Thread that threatened the crucial trailing edge of one of his wings.

F'ren anxiously waited out the darkness; he couldn't be certain that his dragon had avoided a score until their senses returned. But there was no burst of pain from Trath as they emerged, so they must have escaped unharmed this time. He craned his head round to check on the Thread they'd nearly flown into, watching it flutter perilously down towards the ground. _That's one for Kiath and Linnebith to handle_.

_And this one's ours!_

The usual pattern of threadfighting gradually settled F'ren's nerves. Trath's flame was good and steady, and they soon had enough clear air around them to start thinking properly again. In a fall like this, you needed fluid reactions, adapting not only to the abilities of your own dragon, but also those to either side. Surreptitiously at first, and then more overtly, Trath laid claim to the larger clumps falling in Oth's and Ribbath's vicinity, allowing the smaller dragons to use their greater agility to weave around him to pick off the Threads he'd missed. It was F'ren's preferred approach, and while it wasn't precisely how they'd been ordered to fly, he doubted that anyone would have a chance to notice it. So long as his nearest neighbours kept good track of where each other dragon was at any given time, there was no real risk of getting lost _between_ when you skipped to avoid a patch of thread or another dragon's flame. It was all a balance, like most of life. Slightly greater risk, but much more effective results. Today's fall would be over four hours long, and you needed to keep yourself as fresh as possible...particularly when the Wings were taking as much damage as they seemed to be today.

As a wingrider, you never got as good a sense of how everyone else was fighting as the Wingleaders and Wingseconds did. No reports at regular intervals, no knowledge of who'd been scored, or how badly, unless it was one of your neighbours in the Wing, or worse, a death. Everyone noticed the deaths. But every now and then, Trath would pass on a snippet of gossip, either from their own Wing, or one of the others. Enough to tell how things were going, in an abstract sense. Then there was the chatter between levels, warnings being sent down to the dragons who'd need to backtrack for a missed clump, messages passed back from the leading edge about changes in the conditions, and the usual mixture of praises and jibes between one dragon and another. Today, the atmosphere remained depressingly tense, and even the usual warnings petered out as every dragon concentrated on his or her own flying. Was there any need for specific warnings when the whole Weyr was well aware of the peril, with every dragon and rider doing their utmost to stay alive?

Inevitably, it wasn't enough.

The first major incident occurred within the first half hour. The forward Wings had just finished their fifth transverse sweep, and had reversed direction to fight back towards the leading edge again – just enough repetition of the pattern for dragons and riders to start to become blasé about the manoeuvre. But as the Wings reformed, some manner of miscommunication occurred between Flamestrike's H'ersh and the Wingsecond of V'tin's adjacent Wing. It was a simple mistake, the kind of error of judgement anyone from a weyrling to a Wingleader could make, but although it was rapidly rectified it still left a gap in the Weyr's coverage of the fall. It wasn't as bad as it could have been had the mistake been made on the upper level, but even so, a dense mass of Thread slipped through between the two Wings of dragons. In the confusion, men and dragons hesitated, or rushed in rashly.... Trath had closed his mind to the mental bursts of pain, but they were still close enough for F'ren to hear the bellows of argument, anguish and alarm from the dragons at the extremities of each Wing. He tried to stay focused on their own aerial battle, and waited anxiously for new orders.

None came.

 _Nothing the queens can't manage,_ Trath told him, not sounding entirely convinced. _The trailing edge is light today, and three of V'tin's riders are staying behind to catch what they can. There were some bad scores, but none fatal, or likely to be._

F'ren nodded grimly, glad that the skies beneath them were still cloudless enough to make the queens' job possible, and reached into one of the sacks for more firestone. They had a bit of space, and besides, it was best to keep Trath's flame high until things settled down again. The bronze twisted his head to snatch the thrown rock out of the air, and quickly chewed and swallowed. F'ren took the spare moment of time to eye the sacks slung over Oth's neck; old habits died hard. The green had been flaming almost constantly, and would probably finish her first sack at about the same time Trath did. It made sense to share a weyrling sooner rather than later, as soon as they hit the next clear patch of sky. Not right now, the way the Threads were falling, but certainly well before their second sacks ran too low. F'ren directed his bronze towards the largest clump, bracing himself as Trath banked sharply in the air, the dragon losing enough momentum to drop down beside the falling Threads.

 _That one was longer than it looked,_ the bronze apologised.

F'ren slapped his dragon lightly on the neck. _But you seared it very well!_

Trath's powerful wingstrokes had them ascending once more, angling slightly in the sky to pick off another falling strand. The bronze's passage had carried him beneath the blue fighting alongside them, and he banked again in order to resume his place in the formation. The sky tilted, the land swung into view, and F'ren caught a brief glimpse of the younger of the two High Reaches queens, close to the ground and right at the edge of the fall's corridor, where a stray clump of threads threatened the dense orchards on the south facing slopes of the Riverbend Valley. Linnebith had turned her head away from the Threads her rider was flaming, already searching for their next target. The queens were easily working as hard as the rest of the Weyr today, but perhaps enough of the Hold's groundcrews would witness their heroism for Riverbend to improve the quality of their tithe goods in response. Trath straightened in the air, and F'ren craned his neck to check the air above the dragon. All was well, and they'd caught up with their allotted position in the Wing again. The upper levels were doing better, it seemed, because the remaining threads weren't too awkwardly clumped.

_Trath, tell Oth I suggest we call a weyrling for...oh, no! No!_

Right above them, a pale blue dragon had blinked in from _between_ , howling in pain. The dragon was badly scored at the juncture of wing and torso, his rider clinging to the straps white-knuckled, blood flowing from a deep wound on one leg. It was all Trath could do to get out of the way, as the blue tumbled past. _S'nell and Eshpith,_ F'ren realised, catching a glimpse of the man's contorted features. Eshpith had hatched from the same clutch as Trath and, at one point, S'nell had been one of F'ren's wingmen in Cloudburst. A special case, courtesy of Sh'vek's regular shuffles. S'nell had been grieving back then, unsettled by the loss of a weyrmate, and it had been almost a turn before F'ren had felt that he could truly trust the pair in Fall. But by then, there wasn't much he wouldn't have trusted them with. Eshpith was a good dragon, S'nell a good rider. When he'd lost the Wing, S'nell had even been one of the riders that F'ren's replacement, C'nir, had insisted on keeping.

 _I've told Ormaith and the queens of their injury,_ Trath said, his orange-red eyes whirling even faster with concern. _They knew, but Jolth's rider thought he'd gone to the Weyr already._

F'ren peered over Trath's shoulder, hesitant about spending too much time inactive, but also determined to watch the blue until he either blinked _between_ again, or one of the queens arrived to break his fall. It didn't look like Eshpith was going anywhere himself, not unless S'nell could get better control of things. Keeping your dragon from panicking was the first issue; you couldn't jump _between_ safely when distracted by pain or confusion. Oh no, never like that. Ever. But eventually, someone had to act. You broke through, made a decision, jumped home to safety before your dragon lost his nerve...or you held those nerves tight while waiting for a rescue that you could only hope would come.

 _Linnebith can't catch him_ , F'ren realised. The younger queen was nearest, but too busy mopping up more Threads above the orchards. Where was the senior queen, Kiath? Stretched thin, far away...then there she was, a sudden blaze of rosy gold in the morning light.

 _She has him_ , Trath reported.

_Back to work then. We've Thread to burn._

Another hour in, and it seemed that no-one would return to the Weyr unscathed. Trath had caught a minor lacing from an incompletely burned Thread, and F'ren had picked up a few char burns on his face. Eshpith hadn't been the worst injury by then either; they'd lost a brown and two of the weyrlings only minutes later, one of the latter to a shoddy jump, and the queens had had to make a further three rescues after that. The smaller dragons were noticeably tiring now, and Wing by Wing the reserves were called in from the Weyr. The Wings had travelled a considerable distance westwards by that time, and they were at last approaching the bank of thick clouds blown in from the coast. Sh'vek had his second-shift greens and blues keep pace with the fall just behind the trailing edge, and as the Wing's circuit took them past, the dragons exchanged places as necessary. It was an awkward time, but it meant that everyone kept on fighting, with no breaks in the now well-established pattern. Puteth and Graslath had taken up position either side of Trath now. Puteth was an old dragon, able enough, but she lacked imagination. Graslath was younger, but her rider was hopelessly in love with H'ersh, and the pair were unlikely to budge from their assigned flight pattern. F'ren sighed, and resigned himself to an awkward second half to the fall.

 _They'll be exhausted by the end_ , Trath noted, and belched out another tongue of flame.

F'ren tossed him the remaining rocks from their third sack, and told him to call the Weyrlingmaster for another sack. _No rush, just let Earith add us to the queue_.

Trath rumbled his agreement, and flamed again. _Mannifeth will join us, as soon as I give them word. After this clump?_

_Sounds good! At this rate, we'll need another before too long._

Trath followed the falling Thread downwards into the safer zone beneath the fighting Wings, taking the extra space to flame it more economically. F'ren felt his dragon match images with his own eyes, then shift the perspective slightly before passing it on to the weyrling. Seconds later, a younger bronze materialised, his rider already fumbling at the straps holding the sacks in place. The lad's throw was clean, and F'ren had no trouble catching it; he made a note to mention him in passing to one of the other Wingleaders. Probably S'kloss, the youngest current Wingleader. Not Sh'vek, though. Faranth knew, he didn't want to curse a promising lad with that kind of attention! The weyrling blinked away again to true safety, and Trath and F'ren rejoined their Wing. The rest of the fall looked to be about as bloody as the first half had, but hopefully the Wings hadn't let through any more Thread than the groundcrews could deal with. It was hard to tell with the thickening cloud cover, and eventually Sh'vek had to order the lower Wings beneath them. It didn't give you much chance to see what was falling towards you through the clouds, but at least your dragon was spared the awkward updrafts, or the temptation to use the unreliable cloud forms as landmarks when skipping _between_ to dodge Thread. Flaming, skipping _between_ , heeding and giving warnings...it was still a bad fall, but F'ren thought it was starting to look as though they'd escape the disasters of the first half.

As it turned out, F'ren soon found himself proved right, but not in the way he'd been hoping for. The Wings didn't have anything like the disasters of the first half of the fall.

Instead, everything went from bad to worse.

They'd been approaching a tangle of Thread, and Trath had just opened his jaws wide in readiness to flame it when the dragon suddenly twisted away and began climbing frantically through the air towards the clouds. Confused and concerned,F'ren reached out for Trath's mind. _What the sharding...?_

 _Ormaith's orders,_ Trath snapped. _Someone's needed up top, and we're closest. I've a visual from Klewth_.

F'ren's heart sank as the image appeared in his mind. Another sorely injured dragon needing rescue was falling towards the cloud layer. F'ren dragged their viewpoint closer to the clouds, and passed it back to Trath. _I have it. Go. Go! We're guiding one of the queens in_?

Trath confirmed his thoughts as the blackness of _between_ enveloped them.

The Weyr never risked one of its queens on a higher level unless absolutely necessary. Someone must have made the call that the scored brown needed assistance sooner rather than later if he was to be saved, but before the queen arrived, someone else had to get in close enough to ensure that Thread wouldn't threaten her rescue, and to assist if necessary. It was a dangerous role, particularly during conditions such as those they were fighting in today. F'ren wondered how close they really were...though it was true, as far as bronze dragons went, Trath was a good choice for the job.

They reappeared above the clouds in exactly F'ren's expected position, just in time to see the brown spiral sharply past. He'd managed to gain some control of his descent, certainly not enough to manage a safe landing, but surely enough to jump _between_ on his own? Trath banked into a spiral of his own, surveying their surrounds at the same time as keeping pace with the falling dragon. Miraculously, they'd emerged directly between two clumps, either of which could have grounded Trath for months, or worse. The bronze flamed one, then the other, all the while pulling together a visual for the queen.

 _Kiath makes the rescue_ , he told his rider shortly before the senior queen appeared. She slid beneath the brown, taking his weight across her back barely more than a dragonlength above the clouds.

 _Just in time,_ F'ren remarked, relieved.

Trath flamed another stray Thread before following Kiath at a safe distance into the blankness of the clouds. _Gryth's rider cannot see_ , he said, _else they'd have risked returning to the Weyr themselves._

_Well, they'll have got back safely now, won't they?_

Trath paused to think, and abruptly his mind filled with confusion. _But Kiath is still here, down in the clouds._

_What!_

_The Weyrwoman cannot give Kiath a visual. She struggles, and is in pain!_

F'ren felt Trath's mind reach out in several different directions... to the queen, the injured brown, and down to Sh'vek's Ormaith beneath the clouds. The brown, Gryth, called out in confused pain, and the chilling noise was shortly followed by a second shriek that could only have come from Kiath herself. F'ren slammed an image of the heights well above the Weyr into Trath's head, as the dragon tried to figure out where Kiath was, and what was happening.

 _Give it to her_ , the bronzerider insisted. _Linnebith too._

The sickening sense of dread was back in Trath's mind. _Kiath is confused, but she jumps. Linnebith follows. No!_

_What?_

Immense pressure bore down on the minds of both dragon and rider. Trath's flight faltered under the onslaught of conflicting demands from the Weyrleader's bronze and the junior queen, Linnebith, and his own instinctive sense of what was necessary. _Gryth still falls_ , Trath said, clearly confused.

_How? Kiath had him, surely._

_I don't know. Linnebith demands to know what we did, and to assist getting Kiath to the ground. Ormaith demands to know what we did, and insists we return to the Wing with a damned good explanation. But we're going after Gryth._

F'ren would have made the same decision himself, and applauded Trath's clear thinking. _Agreed. And Kiath_?

The bronze was silent on that score, his concentration fixed on finding Gryth. They broke through the clouds back into clear skies again, and the bronze looked around vainly for the injured brown.

Gryth was nowhere to be seen.

Descending sharply down to the level of the lower Wings, and still searching for sign of the other dragon, both Trath and F'ren found themselves startled by the unexpected appearance from _between_ of another dragon. Ormaith, and Sh'vek. The Weyrleader leaned across his bronze's neck towards them, his features contorted as he shouted. “They jumped, you deadglow!”

F'ren shook his head, unwilling to believe it. Trath had been almost on top of them, and Kiath had definitely left the brown behind. But then...if that's what had happened, where in Faranth's name had they got to? “Not with Kiath,” he shouted back, “and they're still falling!”

The stare he received in reply from Sh'vek was chilling, and F'ren soon knew the reason why. A dragon had just died. _Not Kiath, surely, please!_ he whispered mentally to Trath.

 _No_ , the dragon answered in heartbroken relief. _Gryth. I understand now. Kiath cast them aside. They jumped to find Linnebith, when it happened, but she was gone. We'd just called her away!_

F'ren felt bile rise in his throat, suddenly understanding the fate to which they'd condemned Gryth and his rider. Oh, they'd still been falling through the air above Riverbend, but so much lower than F'ren and Trath had thought. _Did they...._

_Gryth jumped before they hit ground. He would not have survived the impact._

F'ren swallowed bitterly. _Shard it._ He twisted his head round to look at the Weyrleader; this wouldn't be good. _Ask Ormaith what our orders are._

Sh'vek shook his head and raised two gloved fingers in the air, a clear reminder of the number of times F'ren had managed to displease him that day, and then proved that Ormaith, too, could force a strong visual on another dragon. Trath accepted the offered image meekly, and slipped _between_.

 _Ormaith says his rider will deal with you later,_ Trath relayed while they hung senseless in the dark, _assuming we choose to survive the rest of this fall. You may wish otherwise. Until then, we're to get back to the Wing. Ormaith returns to the Weyr with M'arsen and Pellenth. H'ersh and Fith lead the Wing, and you take his place as Wingsecond._

F'ren matched and held his dragon's mental image of their new Wing position until it became reality. Back in the air, the dragon immediately erupted into flames, his reactions even quicker than F'ren had thought possible. _Someone might have warned us to hang back a little!_

 _The fall has worsened down here_ , Trath said.

His dragon was right, as usual. Visibility was down about as far as it got, with a humid mass of low cloud extending almost all the way down to the hilltops. The air was nowhere near damp enough to defeat Thread on its own and save the dragonriders the trouble, but the falling Threads were now darkened by the moisture in places, making them much harder to spot as they fell. Even worse, some looked to be safely dead, and weren't. Oh, there'd be burrows a plenty from this fall, that was certain. But for the first time in three turns, F'ren had the chance to make a real difference. He threw Trath a few more chunks of rock, and inspected the Wing while his dragon chewed noisily. “H'ersh is sticking to Sh'vek's pattern then,” F'ren muttered to himself. He'd have favoured a wedge at this point, and asked Trath to suggest it to the Wingsecond's dragon. In the distance, the other man looked round towards them, and raised an arm.

_Fith says his rider concurs. We reform the-_

Trath broke off mid-thought and grunted a bellyful of flame at nothing. He wasn't alone. All the way across the sky, dragons were losing focus: checking their flight in confusion or blundering ahead blindly; mistiming their flames or failing to flame at all. The unlucky immediately suffered for it.

_Kiath needs help! The Weyrwoman...._

Everything seemed to shrink in the face of Trath's...no, _Kiath's_ panic. There was pain, and F'ren's thoughts became fogged, but somehow so, so intense as well. Every bit of his strength seemed to be draining away into numbness, except for the scalding echoes of loss and pain reverberating through his bronze's mind, as dragon after dragon encountered disaster. Trath twisted his head from side to side in indecision.

F'ren clamped down on his dragon's emotions as firmly as he dared, blocking the litany of newly deceased dragons and riders from their thoughts. This whole day was impossible, an unthinkable nightmare! _The Weyrwoman isn't dead yet, or Kiath would have suicided, but we can't do a thing for Maenida while there's Thread to be fought. Kiath endangers the Weyr, and everyone living between here and Balen_. Why in Faranth's name hadn't Ormaith and Linnebith got control over Kiath already? He gently eased the bronze's mind away from the panicking queen, and back towards the danger of the Threadfall; hopefully, the other riders would be doing the same for their own dragons. Abashed, Trath quickly pulled himself together and renewed his fight with more fervour than he'd shown all day. F'ren let his bronze flame a clump to ash, then nudged him to get back into contact with the Wingsecond. _We still need to reform the Wing_. He looked back over his shoulder to check on H'ersh and Fith, but the centre of the Wing held only greens and blues. Had they hopped _between_ , or been injured?

 _They died_.

The bronzerider's heart sank, and he found himself laughing coldly. _Shard it. We've got no choice now, Trath. Flamestrike Wing's our problem until Thread stops or we hear otherwise. Get them organised, insist as strongly as you have to. I want us in a proper wedge five minutes ago._

Trath took up a central position, and most of the Wing quickly obliged in forming up around him. The exceptions were entirely predictable – three of the Wing's browns and two of its greens, whose riders were even less inclined to trust him than the rest of their Wingmates – but he wasn't going to waste Trath's efforts on enforcing things now. Time would tell...and yes, the new formation was working better already, F'ren decided, as they cut a clean swathe through the falling Thread. _Let the others fly as they will, but they'll have more protection in formation. If they don't figure that out for themselves, it's their own problem, not ours._

Trath silently agreed, and called for the first change in direction. The reluctant pairs joined the formation before the Wing had finished its second sweep of the threadfall corridor, and F'ren was pleased to see Deluge and Icestorm Wings follow suit. Each of them was on their own until Sh'vek returned to take charge. But with so many injuries, they were flying wing-light.

 _Call back half of the first shift_ , F'ren asked his dragon. If Sh'vek disagreed, he could always stop them at the Weyr. While he waited to see if the extra dragons would be joining them, the bronzerider caught sight of the Weyrlingmaster and his Wing of youngsters far below. He'd obviously elected to allow his senior weyrlings to flame any Thread that escaped the Wings; probably a wise act. But they'd be better use on the upper levels, F'ren realised. _Talk to Earith, too. It's the Weyrlingmaster's decision, but we could use a few he trusts on the mop-up line behind our wedge._

A handful of greens and blues returned to rejoin the Wing from the Weyr, and a few minutes later F'ren had an answer from the Weyrling Wing, in the form of a bronze and two blues. Mannifeth was the bronze, a pleasing result in F'ren's eyes. Trath directed them into place, and then resumed flaming Threads in earnest, periodically checking on the other dragons and the inexperienced youngsters.

 _They fly well_ , he said after watching one of the blues successfully char, skip and reappear.

 _They were close to graduating anyway_ , F'ren agreed. _Keep a close watch on them though; they don't deserve a first fall like this._

Time passed slowly, every second stretching out into minutes, but at last F'ren tasted something other than rancid ash in the air...the tang of the ocean air. Beneath the fighting Wings, the coastline slowly emerged from its misty shroud, and F'ren realised the leading edge had already passed above it. They had barely ten more minutes left to fight! Other Wings had already noticed the same thing, he realised...why else the sudden sound of cheers, and the sense of optimism? Of course, there was no cause to relax yet – the last Threads to fall above the land were just as dangerous as the first. Trath was long familiar with his rider's caution, and the dragon immediately slipped back from the wedge in order to maintain a better perspective of the Wing as it fought, and to chivvy anyone who was celebrating too soon.

And then it was over.

The trailing edge was ahead of them, heading out to sea, watched by over two hundred utterly exhausted dragons. F'ren let his arms drop down to his sides and stretched the tension out of his neck and shoulders. By the First Egg, things couldn't have got much worse than that! He let out a loud sigh, and found it turning half into a laugh, or maybe an exhausted sob. Too much had happened today; he could scarcely think! One by one, the other Wings began to blink out to return to the Weyr, and F'ren turned his thoughts back to the job at hand _Dismiss the weyrlings first_ , he told his bronze, _while I think about what to tell the Wing._

And what could he tell them? Thank them for listening to his orders when there was no-one else left, only to be undermined as soon as they returned? Praise them for not letting too much Thread through, when there were _bound_ to be burrows scattered across the landscape from here right the way....

Oh fardling, flaming balls of...who was dealing with the _burrows_?

He grabbed his head in his hands and growled in frustration. Linnebith would be taking on Kiath's role with the injured dragons, keeping them calm enough to be treated...and Faranth knew, she'd be sorely pushed just coping with that task, let alone thinking of anything else. Delene certainly didn't have the sense to delegate, Maenida was in who knew what condition, Sh'vek, well, F'ren wasn't in a hurry to ask the man anything at this point.

 _The Wing ask us why we wait_ , Trath informed him softly. _We cannot leave yet, can we?_

_No. Not all of us, at any rate. Who's freshest?_

The bronze's mind was coloured by bitter humour. _Better ask who can still fly._

F'ren grunted a laugh. _They'll do. Send everyone else back, the rest can follow us back along the path of 'fall_. As Trath tiredly began winging his way eastwards again, F'ren looked back to see who was following. A dozen dragons; better than he'd expected. Stiff-necked old Puteth was one, and for once F'ren was glad to be accompanied by that pair. Duty-driven old F'sigger would back him up, and see this final task through no matter what.

Flying low across the landscape, his riders were quick to spot the first of the burrows. The impact sight was completely bare of vegetation. A few fat tendrils of Thread lingered on the surface, flailing mindlessly for more sustenance. F'ren directed one of the blues to make a flaming pass while the other dragons landed, but before they had reached the ground, Trath spoke up with more news.

 _Bronze Mannifeth returns to us_.

_The weyrling?_

_Yes. His rider brings agenothree tanks and a pump, and shovels. I give them our visual now._

_He does? 'Bout time something went right round here_. Truth be told, he'd not felt this exhausted in turns, and had utterly forgotten the need for more equipment than a dragon's own flames. He fell more than jumped down from Trath's neck as they landed, and eyed the burrow suspiciously. The surface Threads were clearly charred, but if a whole tangle had burrowed, very little of it would have stayed on the surface.

Instinct made him look up again as the bronze weyrling blinked in from _between_ right above the burrow. Mannifeth quickly landed to join the other dragons, and his rider slid down from his dragon's back, arms full of equipment. “I brought the stuff you asked for, Sir!” he said cheerily.

It had been a very long time since anyone had willingly lied for him. F'ren caught the weyrling's eye with a level stare, and the lad winked conspiratorially.

“Ah, thank you....”

 _His name's O'reb,_ Trath prompted.

“...O'reb.” The lad was obviously a quick thinker, but if he wanted an ally or influence in the Weyr, he was making a pretty sorry choice of it. F'ren gestured to the other riders to unload the agenothree tanks slung beneath Mannifeth's belly, and watched as the riders set to work destroying the first burrow. _Tell Mannifeth that he and his rider have impressed us today. That they may make good Wingleader material in the future, so long as they don't get too cocky. Stress that last bit, he's way too enthusiastic._

 _I have_ , Trath replied. _Mannifeth says his rider is very scared about the injuries back at the Weyr, and is trying to stay strong_.

Well that was a good sign. F'ren walked over to O'reb, and slapped the lad across the shoulders. “Good work, lad.”

The young bronzerider gave a hesitant, somewhat sickly smile in reply. “I didn't know a Fall could be this bad, Sir.”

F'ren sighed and folded his arms, scuffing his feet on the denuded dirt. He looked blankly out across the landscape, trying to spot the next burrow, and quietly offered the lad a few more words of advice; he could take them or leave them as he wanted. “You kept your head, and your dragon will soon forget what you've seen today. You may not, but bad memories are their own reward. We're still alive to have them at least, and we've done the job our dragons were born for. You can be proud of that.”

He turned to look back at the boy...no, definitely a man now, a full-fledged fighting rider after what he'd witnessed and done today...and found O'reb nodding soberly. “Get back to the Weyr now, or Earith will never let me hear the end of it.” F'ren raised his voice, and called out to Puteth's rider, who was busily directing agenothree into the burrow. “F'sigger, when you're done there, would you accompany O'reb back to the Weyr?”

The greenrider thrust the agenothree sprayer's wand into one of his wingmate's hands with a glare. “Aye,” he said, and started striding towards F'ren.

F'ren met him halfway, and hurriedly spoke first, quietly enough that no-one else could hear. “This job's too big for us, especially with only one tank. We'll be too slow.”

The greenrider looked round to give F'ren a questioning stare as they approached his dragon. “Not as useless as I thought, are you sir? You want me to get help?”

“Absolutely. I don't care who, just get it done. Start back at Riverbend, with the older burrows.”

“Huh.” F'sigger grabbed hold of his riding straps, and hauled himself up onto his dragon. “I'm not stupid either, man. We'll get it done.”

“See that you do.” F'ren turned back to the burrow just in time to see a shrub several strides beyond it vanish under a rising mass of threads. Cursing loudly, he grabbed the last spare shovel and started to run.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

 

_Bend your backs and set your shovels_   
_Break the branches, mind the thorns_   
_Dig the roots and treat them kindly_   
_Weave the flowers in your hair_   
_Spare the sap to ease those muscles_   
_Bring your harvest home again_

_Wash the roots and dry them gently_   
_Slice them finely 'cross the grain_   
_Boil and strain them, stir those paddles_   
_Breathe the perfume of your hair_   
_Breathe the pungent stench of numbweed_   
_Salve that saves us all our pain_

 

**Noon, 22.10.34**

**High Reaches Weyr**

 

Ormaith emerged from _between_ little more than a dragonlength above the westernmost of the Seven Spindles, and dropped instantly into a steep dive towards the ground. The two queens had already landed safely, but Maenida hadn't yet dismounted from Kiath. Sh'vek's concern deepened as Ormaith descended. Maenida was slumped sideways across Kiath's neck and as far as he could tell she wasn't moving at all. The queen herself was moving enough for both of them: lifting herself up from all fours and twisting around on her haunches before dropping back to the ground to hiss, teeth bared, at anything that moved. Two full lengths away, Linnebith was hunched into a crouch beside her rider, appearing utterly submissive beside her dam's aggression.

Ormaith made a rough landing, but with Maenida injured, Sh'vek was past caring about anything else. If she died.... He tore his gloves off and unclipped himself from his straps, dropped heedlessly down from his dragon's neck and was running almost before his feet touched the ground. What had that bastard F'ren done? And why hadn't anyone got Maenida down?

He slowed to a halt beside Delene, and looked around. His Wingsecond was running up to join them, but there was no-one else near. Even the healers were keeping their distance. “Why haven't you got her down yet?” he asked the junior weyrwoman.

Delene gave him a wild-eyed stare. “I _can't_! Kiath won't let anyone close!”

And whose fault was that? “Call yourself a weyrwoman?” he snapped. “Linnebith won't let her hurt you!”

The senior queen was still shifting about warily, eyes whirling the most intense shade of red Sh'vek had ever seen on a dragon. But he had a point to prove. Knowing that Ormaith was watching his back, ready to act if necessary, he strode purposefully towards the queen. “Kiath!”

The distressed queen whirled towards him – and therefore towards Ormaith and Linnebith, which was part of the plan. Back arched, head snaking from side to side...everything in her posture was that of a carnivore ready to lash out, a creature of instincts whose only concern was her rider's protection.

Sh'vek stopped at arms length from the dragon's head and looked her in the nearest eye. A hundred distorted crimson reflections of his features looked back at him, twisted into fearful rage. Behind him, he could hear Ormaith and Linnebith drawing closer as well, with M'arsen's brown Pellenth following in their wake. That was good. “Kiath. Listen to me. We have to get her down, and then we can help her.”

The whirling of the queen's eyes slowed as she focused on him. Sh'vek seized the momentary chance her attention offered. _Now, Ormaith!_

The Weyrleader's bronze and the junior queen together forced their will upon Kiath; then in a weird echoing sensation, Pellenth was there too. Sh'vek at last felt Delene add her will to her dragon's – he could have done with her talents right from the start, shard it! – and Kiath slowly sank towards the ground.

“Get her down, Delene,” Sh'vek said quietly, beckoning the junior weyrwoman forward. He stayed rigidly still in front of Kiath, willing the queen to do the same. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Delene tentatively scramble up to unbuckle Maenida's straps. The young woman's hands were shaking; she clearly felt out of her depth...and perhaps not unreasonably so. Kiath was the Weyr's senior queen, no weak-minded green confused by pain and easy to subdue! “M'arsen, give her some help.”

M'arsen and Tarkan, the Weyr's resident Healer, carefully eased Maenida down from her queen and laid the unconscious Weyrwoman on the ground. But as soon as Maenida lost physical contact with her dragon, Sh'vek sensed something amiss. Controlling Kiath was taking more and more of Ormaith's strength. Suddenly, Kiath's fear and defiance surged, overwhelming the minds of the other three dragons.

_WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHERE IS SHE?_

Sh'vek instinctively flinched backwards as Kiath pushed herself to her feet again; her bellowing was fit to deafen the entire Weyr. He was relieved to find Ormaith right behind him. Linnebith was beside his bronze, Delene a whimpering ball huddled on the ground beneath her feet; the woman could move damn fast when she had a mind to. M'arsen had a tight hold on Tarkan's arm, keeping the Healer from making his own escape. As for Maenida....

 _WHERE_ IS _SHE?_

It was then that the dragons started keening.

Sh'vek flinched at the sound. They weren't keening for Kiath, not with the queen still there right in front of his eyes...but with her acting like that, he half expected her to vanish at any moment. _Ormaith? What's wrong? Can't Kiath-_

 _She cannot hear her_ , the bronze told him, his mind strained with effort.

Cold dread crept up Sh'vek's spine. He watched as Tarkan dropped to the ground beside Maenida and felt for a pulse and checked her breathing...and she _was_ still breathing, thank Faranth! Sh'vek leaned on his dragon, encouraging Ormaith to calm the queen. _She's alive. Help Kiath reach her!_

_I am, but...yes! Kiath believes me now. And she calls on the rest of the Weyr to help her!_

_During_ Threadfall? Linked with his bronze, who was in turn in close mental contact with Kiath, Sh'vek felt that contact expand as dragon after dragon was pulled in to help Kiath reach her unconscious rider's mind. The keening that signified another dragon's death echoed around the Weyrbowl, but Sh'vek didn't care who it was, so long as it wasn't Kiath; those details could wait until later. Quietly, so quietly, Maenida began to moan. Hearing her rider's voice, Kiath called out in triumph and settled her belly back down on the ground. The Weyrwoman's eyelids fluttered lightly, but stayed closed.

Sh'vek stumbled towards her, and crouched down besides the healer. “She'll live?” he gasped.

Tarkan shrugged, and continued with his checks. Supporting Maenida's neck with one hand, he unclipped her wherhide helmet and carefully pulled it away from her head. Her hairnet came loose along with it, spilling coils of her tightly curled hair to fall across her face.

Sh'vek brushed the dark brown tendrils aside, hoping to see or feel some response from his weyrmate. None came – not even when the healer pulled back her eyelids with his fingers. “Well?” he prompted. “What's wrong with her, Tarkan?”

“I've no idea yet,” the healer muttered.

Well, that simply wasn't good enough. Sh'vek stood up, placed his hands on his hips, and swung round to face his second. “M'arsen, fetch the Master Healer. Perhaps _he'll_ know.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tarkan scramble to his feet. So, the healer _did_ have something to say after all. “Out with it, healer.”

“He should bring Master Rynder, not Master Garoltray. Rynder's better with head injuries, and that's what we're dealing with.”

Sh'vek nodded at his Wingsecond. “Do it, fetch Master Rynder.” It would take time to fetch the Master though – time Maenida might not even have. “ _Quickly,_ M'arsen.” He spun round, and hauled Tarkan up onto tiptoes by his shirtfront. “If you're wrong about this, it comes out of _your_ hide. If she dies....” He left the threat hanging, and helplessly turned back to look round the Weyr. The crowd of uselessly gaping spectators was smaller than he'd expected, and he soon understood why.

Everyone else was busy tending injured dragons and riders.

Shaffit, where'd they all _come_ from? Thirty-four years of fighting Thread, and he'd _never_ seen the like, not even at the very start of the Pass! He _needed_ to be back with the Wings directing the Threadfighting, but....

 _Kiath needs me here_ , Ormaith insisted.

The forcefulness of his dragon's mind brooked no argument. _Then C'nir will have to manage without us._ Sh'vek looked back at Kiath. She at least seemed much less distressed than before. Delene, on the other hand, was sitting at her own queen's feet, wracked with sobs, watching uselessly as Tarkan had Maenida lifted onto a stretcher. Why couldn't a fool queen pick a girl with sense for once? He walked over and pulled the tearful woman to her feet, and whispered harshly in her ear. “Pull yourself together. We've got a lot of injured dragons to deal with, and they'll need Linnebith to help ease their pain until the numbweed kicks in.”

“But it _hurts_...!”

“Then the sooner you get to work, the sooner it'll stop!” There were dragons creeling and wailing with pain all over the Bowl, far outnumbering those who were already being treated by the dragonhealers. “Triage will go a lot faster if Pakall has your help. And if that's too much for you, pick up a sharding mop and make yourself _useful_. Understand?” He shoved Delene forwards, and watched her scurry off. To think he'd ever thought that such an empathic chit was a good thing for the Weyr! If she'd only had the slightest bit of control over her talent, enough to hear other dragons more reliably than she did, or even to tune into just one of them at a time rather than the whole Weyr at once, well then he might have been able to make something of it. Today, as usual, her talent had peaked just when it was least wanted.

Sh'vek fell into step with the stretcher bearers as they walked past, Ormaith and Kiath following on behind. He'd see Maenida settled and stay at the Weyr at least long enough to hear what the Master healer had to say. Whatever was ailing her, surely they'd have it under control by then? If not.... _Ormaith, pass word to the Wingleaders that I'll want them to report in immediately after Threadfall. I want a proper explanation for this mess._ He already had his own suspicions: if today was anything like every other disaster to strike the Weyr, F'ren was bound to be at least partly responsible. _Faranth, I'm going to cripple_ someone _over this!_

“Weyrleader Sh'vek!”

Sh'vek stopped in his tracks, and grimaced. The Headwoman's piercing voice went straight through him at the best of times, but today, with the edge of panic in her voice, she was even more grating than usual. “What is it now, woman?” he asked, not even bothering to look at her.

“Sir, I know this isn't the best ti-”

“Then it – can – wait!” He turned to face her and, seeing her face, slowly unclenched his fists. She was white as the winter snows, and shaking her head fretfully.

“No?” he asked, more softly this time. “Hendra, whatever the problem is, if you think I need to hear it now, _say_ it.”

She clamped her eyes shut, and turned her head away. “Forgive me, I should have had the Weyr better prepared. But we've never had half this many injured dragons at one time before, and we can't cope with it. We....” She drew in a shuddering lungful of air, and bit her lip. “I take full responsibility, sir. We're doing everything we can for them, but there's only so many capable hands, and we're running desperately short of supplies! We need more healers, we need more redwort, more numbweed, more bandaging.”

Another injured pair chose that moment to appear noisily from _between_ and skid to a whimpering landing in the Weyrbowl just a couple of dragonlengths away. A few people looked up from their work, but as far as Sh'vek could see, no-one was making a move to help. He felt himself grow cold.

“Healers. Redwort. Numbweed,” he bit out. “What about Fellis? What about some fardling _common sense_?”

“We have sufficient Fellis,” Hendra admitted, a little unwisely.

Sh'vek's temper snapped, and he lashed out, backhanding the woman across her face. She crumpled to the ground with a gasp. He stared down at her for a few seconds, unmoved, before continuing towards the steps that led up to Maenida's weyr. What was a bruise and a few loose teeth compared to the agony of dozens of fighting dragons and their riders? By the First Egg, it was Hendra's _job_ to ensure that the Weyr was properly prepared for just such eventualities, and her suffering was the least of the consequences of her failure. No Weyr could afford such deficiency, especially not during a disaster like this. Except, here he was, about to request help for his _autonomous_ Weyr! But what other choice did he have? _Ormaith, contact Carth at Ista. Tell her we need healers, and supplies. Numbweed and redwort._

_I have. She says Vallenka wishes to know what has happened._

He hurried up the steps two at a time, catching up with the slower-moving stretcher on the queen's broad ledge. Maenida still wasn't properly conscious as far as he could tell. Under those circumstances, he'd actually welcome his sister's advice.

_Tell Carth... tell her that they should come up here and see for themselves. I'd like to speak to Vallenka anyway._

He moved off the ledge into the weyr, giving Kiath and Ormaith room to spring up after him. The queen slunk miserably inside to lie on her couch, while his bronze watched closely from the ledge. Sh'vek followed the healers to the entrance to Maenida's rooms and stopped in the doorway. From there, he could watch them and also keep an eye on what was happening in the bowl. Ormaith obligingly stepped to one side to offer him a better view. He stood there, stiffly, as the healers lifted the Weyrwoman's limp body onto their bed. Out in the bowl, someone had at last deigned to see to the scored blue and his rider, and Hendra had disappeared. Good riddance. Tarkan was bending over Maenida now, checking her breathing or eyes again or something. Well, the details didn't matter so long as the man got results. If.

Where was M'arsen and this Thread-cursed Master Healer?

He started to go over the day's events in his head, running up to the point where it had all gone wrong. Should he have acted differently? A bad fall, true, but not an unmanageable one. No, they'd been coping as well as anyone could, at least up until the point when M'gan's Baxuth had bespoken Ormaith, requesting an upper-level rescue. Sh'vek could have sent any one of the browns or bronzes, or asked M'gan to select someone from the upper Wings, though truthfully, for a risky job it was Sh'vek's own right – and duty – to make the choice. What had he been thinking, picking Trath and _F'ren_? As far as Sh'vek was concerned, those two had always been expendable, but he'd never been so naive as to think they were stupid as well. No, F'ren would've known why he'd been chosen...was this some kind of malicious _revenge?_ What in Faranth's name had happened up there? Oh, it was conceivable that the bronzerider had done nothing untoward at all, but that was a weak excuse. The man had been a thorn in Sh'vek's side right from the start. What had he done to them? What had _happened_ up there?

Kiath's howl came a fraction of a second before Tarkan's panicked shout.

“Sh'vek, she's fitting!”

"ORMAITH, CONTROL HER!" he shouted as he ran into the weyr. Maenida's eyes were wide, her body twitching as Tarkan's assistants held her down. Tarkan looked up at Sh'vek, swallowing nervously.

“I know it looks bad, but she's in no immediate danger from the fit.”

_Ormaith, is that right?_

_No. Kiath will go_ between _soon if this does not stop_.

Sh'vek pulled Tarkan aside and hissed in his ear. “And if the queen goes _between_ in the meanwhile?”

The healer paled above his beard. “I could knock her out,” he explained, “but I don't know if I should. There was no scuffing on her helmet. No sign of any skull fracture, but there's clearly something wrong inside her head. It's a big risk. She might not come round at all, and I don't know how it'd affect Kiath anyway.”

Sh'vek nodded, the decision forced by necessity. “With Kiath at risk right now, we've no choice. Do it then.” Tarkan took a bottle and spoon from the table, and bent back over Maenida's tense and twitching form. Sh'vek closed his eyes, reaching out for the comfort of his dragon, and to better gauge Kiath's confusion. Gradually, it stilled, and when he opened his eyes again Maenida's eyes were once more closed, her movements less frenzied. And then they stopped, and she was breathing easily again. He let out a breath of his own, only then realising that he'd been holding it in.

“Weyrleader?”

“M'arsen.” Sh'vek stepped around Maenida's bed, and walked towards his Second.

“The Healer's here.”

The brownrider moved aside to let Master Rynder into the room; the Healer was a scrawny figure with oddly protruding eyes. He dashed towards the Weyrwoman, not even stopping to do more than nod at Sh'vek. As the Weyrleader watched, he exchanged a few quiet words with Tarkan, then set to examining Maenida in what appeared to be a competent manner. There was nothing more that Sh'vek could do for her now, and no reason to wait around for her to wake, not so soon after a dose of fellis. “I'll be in the council room, Tarkan,” Sh'vek said. “Keep me informed.”

M'arsen gripped his arm as he made to leave the room. “Sh'vek?”

“Yes?”

“Weyrwoman Vallenka arrived just as we reached the ledge. Did you send for her?”

“Of course I did.” He jerked his arm free with a frown; it wasn't like M'arsen to overstep himself like that.

The brownrider nodded, and gave a grim smile. “I suppose it wasn't likely the news would spread so fast on its own.”

“Hopefully there's none to be spread. Was she alone?”

“She had another queen with her, and a brown and a blue. Some passengers, and carry-sacks as well. Healer stamps on some of the sacks, Pellenth tells me.” M'arsen looked questioningly at him, obviously seeking an explanation.

Sh'vek was tempted to leave him guessing, but the man needed to know the facts. “Good. Ista has agreed to meet the immediate shortfall in our medical supplies. It seems that Hendra failed to ensure that we had enough set aside. She'll be leaving the Weyr before nightfall – make sure of that, would you? – but don't stop her assisting if she's out there. Faranth knows, the woman owes the Weyr amends for this.”

M'arsen looked suitably appalled. “Where do you need me most, sir?”

Sh'vek paced across to Kiath's couch. The queen was staring at the wall, as if she could see straight through it and all the way in to Maenida, slumped unconscious on the bed. “H'ersh has charge of the wing, C'nir the Fall,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder at his Second. “ If Vallenka's not on the ledge already, go and greet her. We'll owe her a favour for the loan of her healers; let's not make it worse with poor hospitality. Tell her I'll see her in the council room. After that, do what you can outside, and call me if Pakall can't manage. Oh, and make _sure_ Delene's doing a proper job with the injured. She seems rather more shaken than I'd like. Shard it, I'd be out there myself, but Ormaith will need me close if Kiath...well, let's hope it doesn't come to that. ”

Leaving Kiath to her vigil, Sh'vek pushed open the door into the council chamber. The room still held the detritus of the morning's meeting: klah mugs scattered across the large table, a couple of hides from the records room stacked in a corner, chairs haphazardly arranged wherever their last occupants had left them. Sh'vek kicked the first chair aside, and gave up on the rest. He sank down into V'tin's usual seat and stared at the wood grain, tracing out the lines with a fingertip as he tried to find some kind of calm. Try as he might, it continued to elude him.

It wasn't long before he heard the sound of steady footsteps moving along the stone hallway. Vallenka, almost certainly – anyone else would either be rushing or far more hesitant. Sh'vek didn't look up, and decided not to bother speaking either. His sister wasn't one to wait to be invited in, and besides, she knew where to find him.

Vallenka proved him right in short order, entering the room quietly before pulling out a chair and sitting down beside him. “I must say, this isn't what I expected when you called me up here,” she drawled. “Dragontalk says it's something to do with Maenida?”

Sh'vek nodded; it was a gross understatement, but accurate enough.

“Good.”

What? Startled, he found himself staring at Vallenka. Tall and thin, she'd been a formidable woman even before she'd Impressed, and over forty turns partnered to her queen had only added to those attributes of her character.

She smiled at him, her face creasing, but it did nothing to lessen the sternness of her features. “The alternative was gross incompetence.”

“Huh.” Sh'vek was unamused. Faranth only knew how many lives had been lost, but so long as he didn't make her look bad by association, all was well apparently. Well, if that was the line she'd be taking, there were a few things he could remind her of, if he chose. But that could wait; the day's business came first, as always. “Who did you bring, then?”

Vallenka leaned back in her chair, and looked towards the doorway as someone hurried past. “Wissa, of course. The girl was a senior apprentice Healer before she was Searched, and she's proved her worth with the dragons as well. Two of our other Weyrhealers, plus the supplies you wanted. Carth's doing what she can for the dragons, too.” She turned back to her brother, still smiling, and waited expectantly.

Sh'vek decided to get the excesses of gratitude over and done with as soon as possible. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“So what happened, exactly?”

The Weyrleader sighed, and shifted in his chair. V'tin's chair, and not half as comfortable as his own. “There was a rescue needed on the upper flight, just above the cloud layer. I sent F'ren and Trath to make sure the air was clear, they called Kiath up...and something went wrong, in the clouds.” Impotent fury surged through him again, and he grabbed the nearest mug and threw it to smash against the wall. “No-one saw a fardling thing! Our healer tells me her brain is injured. He doesn't know how bad, yet,” he continued quietly, “but, by the First Egg, if she dies....”

This _could_ spell the end for him – and disaster for the Weyr – but he wouldn't let that happen, not if he could help it. But until he had the answers he needed, he was sharding near powerless.

“If she does, Delene will be Weyrwoman,” Vallenka said slowly. She looked across at him, gauging his reaction. “You should start making plans, brother.”

“I know. I know.” As if he didn't know that already! Faranth, he had contingencies for practically everything else...but losing Maenida had never been a part of his calculations. “But not before I've heard more from the Healers. So. What news from Ista Weyr?”

Vallenka smiled smugly. “Alaireth is clutching as we speak.”

“Oh? Expecting _another_ gold egg, are you?”

“Faranth forfend! No. Five queens is more than enough for any Weyr, and Rahnis wouldn't dare risk adding another. I've made her, and the other girls, well aware of the consequences, believe me!”

He almost hoped there _was_ one, really. Irdana and R'loe of Igen had been pressing for an extra gold for turns, not that Vallenka would ever send _that_ Weyr another of Carth's daughters, not after Leyanath's death. He'd be doing Vallenka a favour by taking on one of her juniors, especially if Alaireth did clutch another gold egg...but even in a small Weyr like Ista, five queens was not an unmanageable number.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway once again, and the two Weyrleaders turned as one to see who was approaching.

“Master Rynder, please come in,” Sh'vek said as the Healer paused outside the doorway. Rynder nodded, and took one of the seats opposite Sh'vek.

“Thank you, Weyrleader. I've made my initial examination, and discussed the symptoms with healer Tarkan. Her unconsciousness complicates matters somewhat, but I believe now's a good time to explain a few of the possibilities to you.”

Odd eyes aside, the man's face was inscrutable. It was probably something they taught them all as apprentices, Sh'vek decided, though perhaps Tarkan had missed that particular class. Well, if he wanted a clear answer, he'd have to ask for it. “Will she live?”

The Master Healer stayed silent for a few moments, lips pursed as he considered his answer. “You ask a difficult question, Weyrleader. Her life expectancy is certainly reduced, but at this stage I cannot offer you _any_ certainty. She may not pull through, or, she could live another twenty or thirty turns. She may recover well, or it may turn out that her mind has been...damaged. The next few hours and days will be critical.”

“Is it the falling sickness?” Vallenka asked.

“That's indeed a possibility, but only one. A growth, perhaps. A burst blood vessel. A clot, from some earlier injury. It could be an isolated event, or the problem could recur at any time. We'll know more in time. Has she... has she seemed different at all recently? Complained of headaches, or loss of balance? Drunk to excess: either klah or alcohol, or even water? Seemed overly fatigued? Or confused? Said anything unusual? Taken any form of medication?''

Sh'vek shook his head. “She was _absolutely_ fine.” Perhaps she had been more tired than usual, but nothing out of the ordinary. _Ormaith? What does Kiath say_?

_Kiath does not know. The Weyrwoman may have had headaches a few sevendays ago, but she does not remember them well, or when they happened. Maenida took medicine, and they went away. Today she was fine, merely a bit stiff, and then suddenly she started hurting very badly. That is all Kiath knows._

“Nothing unusual before today, the dragons tell me. Perhaps a few headaches, a sevenday or so back.'” He frowned, remembering how she'd told him that the willowsalic wasn't working as well as usual one day. But everyone got headaches from time to time, even bad ones, and hers had passed soon enough. Sh'vek clasped his hands together beneath his face, and tapped a finger on his lips. Really, they were no more the wiser than after Tarkan had first looked at her. “She took willowsalic, and eventually they went away. So what _caused_ this?”

“Her dragon would be an adequate witness, yes? I have a number of questions for the queen, and would like to proceed with that investigation now that the Weyrwoman's condition has stabilised. But, I can only hypothesise based on the information I'm given, and there may not be enough of it to make a firm diagnosis. As things stand, it could easily be a random event. Or perhaps not.”

It either was or it wasn't! “Tell me healer – is there _anything_ you can tell me for certain?”

“Why, yes!” Rynder snapped back at him. “I can tell you for certain that I'll be able to give you more definite answers...in time. Now, if you'll excuse me, I should get back to my patient.”

“Damned arrogant healers,” Vallenka murmured after the healer had closed the door behind him. “Tell me, Sh'vek, if she doesn't recover...how do you think Delene will cope in her stead?”

“I think....” He paused as Ormaith and the other dragons of the Weyr gave voice, keening once again for their dead: the Fall had ended at last. Faranth, had he been dealing with this for so long already? “I think I may well have to ask another favour of you.”

Vallenka nodded. “What we have in surplus... well, brother, you have but to ask.” Her face fell distant for a moment, and she spoke again. “Carth tells me one of your bronzeriders is on his way up. C'nir, I think.”

“Good.”

She rose from her chair, and walked over to the doorway to leave. At the edge of the room, she paused. “Watch him, Sh'vek, just as much as all the rest. He might be your second, but when events move fast, loyalties start to slide.”

Wise words, Sh'vek decided. For all her superior attitude, she did know a thing or two. He waited a minute for C'nir to arrive, then rose to find out what was keeping the man. Once out onto Kiath's ledge, he caught sight of the Wingleader halfway up the steps from the bowl, deep in discussion with one of Flamestrike's greenriders. Seeing him, both men spoke at once.

“Weyrleader, thank Faranth!”

“F'sigger's just demanded to know the state of my Wing,” C'nir spluttered. “On F'ren's orders!”

F'ren's orders? What was _F'ren_ doing giving anyone orders?

“There's no _time_ for misunde-”

Sh'vek raised a hand and the greenrider fell silent. _Tell Puteth that whatever F'sigger has to say will have to wait,_ he instructed Ormaith. Ignoring his wingrider, Sh'vek gave C'nir his full attention. “Never mind that now. I want your report first. Casualties, and Thread-damage on the ground. How many did we lose, and how much got through the wings?”

C'nir swung round to stare into the bowl. “Linnebith's still _here_...?”

A simple question, with damning implications. “Are you implying you've not left anyone to deal with the _burrows_ , C'nir?” Sh'vek asked, utterly aghast. “I left the Weyr in _your_ hands!”

A look of sheer horror washed over C'nir's dark face. Swearing to himself, he blinked it away and started stammering his apologies. Down in the bowl, C'nir's Telemath leapt to his feet, in readiness to rectify his rider's mistake.

F'sigger, with all the confidence of an old wingrider long set in his ways, elbowed his way in front of C'nir. “Flamestrike knows its duty sir. But we're short-handed, so F'ren sent me back to fetch help.”

Images of Thread boiling over the countryside faded from Sh'vek's mind, only to be replaced by the equally unpalatable thought of a smugly heroic F'ren returning to the Weyr in triumph. Madness. H'ersh would surely have.... _Ormaith. Please tell me H'ersh and Fith survived the fall_?

_No. They did not. When Kiath was struggling to reach Maenida...._

Stunned, Sh'vek took a deep breath and slowly released it. The whole day was cursed! “Good work, F'sigger.” He patted the greenrider on the shoulder, and turned to look questioningly at C'nir.

“Cloudburst knows its duty to Pern and the Weyr,” C'nir said promptly. “We'll deal with it.”

C'nir shouldn't have needed the reminder! “I want you to stay behind and liaise with the Holders once you've dealt with the burrows. One of your seconds can report on behalf of Cloudburst. F'sigger, go with him. See he does his job right!”

Chastened, the wingleader nodded and saluted, then turned to take the stairs down to the bowl three at a time. Old F'sigger followed him at a far more sensible pace. Sh'vek made his way back up to the ledge, and leant against the wall of the weyr beside Ormaith. _I swear, today'll age me more than the whole of the last turn._

_I know._

_Speak to the wingleaders' dragons. I'll hear their reports now_. A thought crossed his mind, and he added an extra instruction. _Oh, and call back Trath._

 _I have. Trath's rider is not happy leaving the burrows undestroyed. I've told them that the situation is under control, and that the other wingmen don't need their help._ Ormaith paused, unamused by the other bronze's reluctance to follow orders. _They are on their way back._

_Good. Keep F'ren out here until I'm ready for him._

Sh'vek pushed himself away from the wall, and walked back to the meeting room. A drudge was clearing away the mess and straightening chairs as he entered. Ignoring her, he walked over to the large wall-slate mounted on the north wall, and picked up a piece of chalk. As of that morning, the Weyr had been home to four hundred and forty two dragons: two queens, twenty-nine bronzes, sixty-seven browns, one hundred and forty one blues and one hundred and eighty three greens. Sh'vek wrote the numbers onto the slate, and stepped back to consider them. The Weyr hadn't once fallen below four hundred dragons during his tenure as Weyrleader, but all his instincts told him that that fact would soon change. He stepped up to the board again, and added the names of each of the Weyr's eight wings, and the number of dragons in each, plus a note of the fifty-three flightworthy Weyrlings from the earlier two of the Weyr's past three clutches. The wingleaders and their seconds were filing in as he returned to his seat at the head of the table. Sh'vek sat down in silence, and waited for the other wingleaders to do the same, their seconds standing behind them.

There were quite a few missing faces, and Delene was amongst them.

Sh'vek sighed, and looked to his left at M'arsen. “Delene is still out in the bowl?”

M'arsen nodded. “She's with Wissa, the Istan weyrwoman. Last I saw, they were splinting a nasty break. Do you want me to fetch her?”

“No, not if she's doing something _right_ for a change. But I do need you to check the casualty figures for Flamestrike.”

M'arsen left the council chamber, leaving Sh'vek surveying a most depleted group. C'nir was obviously still absent, and his place at the table had been filled by Cloudburst's brown wingsecond, M'wer. The young bronze wingsecond of Deluge Wing was sitting in V'tin's chair; J'garray was quick to act but slow to think. Sh'vek quickly confirmed via Ormaith that V'tin and Mihoth had been another of the day's fatalities, rather than merely being amongst the injured. Well, that was a loss, and hardly one that that idiot J'garray could fill. Sh'vek nodded thoughtfully to himself, quite adamant that this would be the _only_ occasion that the man would be allowed the privilege of sitting there.

With the exception of Delene and M'arsen, Sh'vek decided that everyone was present who could be. He called the meeting to order, and after explaining briefly that Maenida was in a poor condition but not in any immediate danger, went back to his usual routine of asking after the Weyr's casualties.

“When I left the Wings, our casualties stood at three deaths. Gryth died, as you all know, and I'm told one of the earlier rescues went _between_ from the Weyrbowl. Bad enough already, but I don't imagine things stayed that way. M'wer, would you like to start updating the figures?”

“Sir. Cloudburst reports one further fatality: green Pallath and A'zenk.” M'wer rose and moved stiffly across to the slate. He rubbed at his reddened eyes with one hand, then started altering numbers. “We've three dragons grounded long-term. Of those, I'm told Chulmyth isn't likely to fly again. The rest of the wing suffered only minor scores, and with few exceptions will be fit to fight the next fall.”

“J'garray?”

“Two more deaths, sir, including V'tin. We've seven dragons grounded.”

“Have Pryanth pass the details to M'wer. How did V'tin die?”

“I...er...I don't know.” J'garray shrugged. “They just went _between_.”

“If I may offer a suggestion, Weyrleader?”

Old Ev'les would have been next to speak in any case, and whatever idea he had was certainly worth hearing. “Ev'les. Go on.”

“He chose a poor time to skip _between_. Gath had been speaking to him just before he died. Mihoth jumped right as Kiath panicked. We lost a green pair the same way. Terribly bad luck. Terrible.”

Sh'vek dipped his head in acknowledgement. “I see. And the rest of your casualties?”

“Five serious injuries and two...no, shard it, make that three deaths.” Ev'les leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “Zacca, Sl'barris, and B'sar. A bad day for Shenla, losing son and weyrmate both.”

The two brownriders were – had been – superb riders. Snowfall Wing would feel their loss just as hard as Shenla would, Sh'vek suspected. “Mark them up, M'wer. F'ass?”

The rotund man shifted uneasily in his seat, and stared blankly at the wall as he spoke, refusing to meet Sh'vek's eyes. “Four losses, eight serious injuries.”

 _Four_? It seemed that each Wing had performed worse than the previous one! Desperately hoping that the pattern wouldn't continue, Sh'vek demanded an explanation. “How could you lose so many?”

F'ass blinked like a startled wherry. “The weather....”

“If the weather changes that much, you _do_ have the authority to change formations,” Sh'vek reminded him.

The wingleader looked momentarily relieved. “Oh, we did. It would have been much worse, I'm sure, if we hadn't seen Flamestrike shift into wedge formati.. ah.”

They had? Sh'vek was unimpressed, and added it to his list of issues to discuss with F'ren. Wedges might have proved marginally helpful in the conditions, but the wider spacing could be dangerously stretching for the smaller dragons and was a _long_ way from ideal when the Weyr had another two Falls to deal with over the next six days! “Remind me why you lead one of my Weyr's wings, F'ass. And here's a hint to help you answer: it's not because I expect you to base your strategy on the actions of a wingrider on the other side of the Fall!”

“No sir,” the man answered, even more subdued than before. “My apologies for failing the Weyr. It won't happen again.”

“No, it won't. M'gan?”

“Three fatalities, three dragons grounded. There's another half dozen that won't be fighting fit for another couple of falls, but the Wing's large enough to cope with their absence.”

“Good. G'dil?”

Thunderclap's wingleader swallowed nervously. “We've only two dragons badly injured. But we lost, ah, six. Including one of my seconds. Like Ev'les says, they just went _between_ and...and it won't happen again.”

Sh'vek rubbed his jaw. He'd started grinding his teeth at some point. “S'kloss, give me some better news,” he asked as Delene and M'arsen re-entered the council chamber.

“Windfire lost five I'm afraid, but our other injuries were light. The rest of the wing will be fully recovered within the next seven days.”

“M'arsen? What's the tally for Flamestrike?”

“As well as H'ersh and Fith, we lost brown Rubreth and T'nai.”

The Weyrleader waited anxiously for his second to add more names to the list. “And?” he prompted when M'arsen failed to do so.

The brownrider shrugged. “Nothing else of note. Our injuries were relatively minor, all things considered. I also have a report from the Weyrlingmaster; he lost two pairs in the first half of fall, four in the latter stages. He'd also like to discuss Wing placements for some of them as soon as you wish.”

Two deaths from Flamestrike? That was better than it might have been, with F'ren messing around with the Wing.

M'arsen smiled smugly, and leaned back against the wall. “Good training always tells, sir, no matter who's left in charge.”

“Indeed,” Sh'vek said, returning the smile without really feeling it. H'ersh would be sharding hard to replace. “So. I make that thirty-two deaths in total, and...let's see, a further twenty-eight dragons grounded.” It was strange, almost unreal, just talking about the numbers like that. The Weyr had been practically decimated, and the equivalent of an entire Wing was out of action! Thankfully, they were on the edge of winter and the next two falls would be short and light. Even so, the assembled wing leaders and seconds looked sombre. “We need to decide what to do about V'tin's wing,” Sh'vek announced. “With our losses, we could take the Weyr back to seven full Wings, or fly them light over the winter until the rest of the weyrlings have matured.”

G'dil was the first to speak. He coughed, and looked disparagingly at J'garray. “Seven gets my vote. If you split Deluge, I'm happy to take either of its seconds as a replacement for W'lam.”

“Is it wise to split any of the wings?” J'garray countered.

“Perhaps not,” M'wer said. “And it's not as if we don't have other bronzeriders to consider as wingleaders. It's a pity that Chulmyth was so badly injured, really, but....”

“Are you suggesting that I'm not fit-”

“Ha! It's a wonder you can tie your own bootlaces!”

Sh'vek raised a hand and gestured them to silence. “S'kloss, you had something to add?” The youngest wingleader had his arm raised in the air, as if he were still in a weyrling class.

“Yes,” S'kloss began. “We may not need an eighth wingleader now, but we certainly will in the new turn. And unless you ask for transfers, Weyrleader...there's really only one good choice.”

Was he seriously hearing this? Sh'vek shook his head and forced out a chuckle, knowing exactly what was coming.

“It has to be F'ren,” S'kloss finished.

“F'ren?” Oh, F'ren _could_ lead a wing all right – far better than J'garray could, though that wasn't saying much – but Sh'vek knew the man's ambitions didn't stop there. He even had a queen egg under his belt already, proof of his dragon's competence...but he'd also left two other queens _dead,_ along with Sh'vek's own son. If Maenida and Kiath died as well....

No. When a Weyr had enough good leadership candidates to choose between, why would he want to elevate the one who'd been a proven source of dissension in the past? And not just dissension, outright disaster! The man had taken A'minek from him, taken everything that should have been his son's. For that reason alone, Sh'vek had sworn he wouldn't have a damned thing more. But to _reward_ the man for whatever he'd done to poor Maenida? It was unthinkable!

_You need to choose someone, Sh'vek, and Trath's rider is more competent than most._

_Competence isn't everything, Ormaith._

Still leaning against the wall by the doorway, M'arsen began to speak. “S'kloss, that's the worst idea I've heard all day. Have you forgotten what's happened to Maenida _already?_ And remember Audrealle and Perelane? The man's a sharding _liability_!”

It was good to hear his second echoing his own mind so closely. “In all fairness, we've yet to hear F'ren's side of things.” Fairness was the last thing on Sh'vek's mind, but the appearance of it served its purpose at times. “Call him in, M'arsen. He ought to be here by now.”

M'arsen stepped back into the corridor, and ushered the waiting bronzerider in. F'ren's trousers were muddied to the knees, and his boots were leaving a trail of clods behind him. He nodded at the room and stood stiffly to attention, his arms folded behind his back. “Weyrleader.”

“F'ren.” Sh'vek studied the man carefully, searching for signs of weakness – or anything else that he might exploit. Dark haired and slightly taller than average, F'ren's face wore a bronzerider's arrogance all too easily. Today, his hair was dishevelled and slicked to his scalp in places with sweat, and his face was streaked with ash and blood – but he was no different to any rider, in that. Flecks of char clung to his half-fastened jacket, and one end of his rank cords had unravelled entirely. The bronzerider's expression was more weary than anything else, but Sh'vek had endured the sight of him frequently enough to guess that annoyance was the main emotion behind the man's tightened lips.

“When I left, I told you to take a wingsecond's position,” Sh'vek began. “After H'ersh and Fith died, you quite correctly took over the wing.” The Weyrleader leaned forward in his chair and held the other man's gaze, before asking the question that he knew F'ren couldn't possibly answer correctly. “However, you failed to report once fall had ended. Why?”

“I was busy seeing burrows destro-”

“Too busy to _contact_ the Weyr? To find out that C'nir had the matter in hand?” F'sigger would know that that wasn't _quite_ accurate, but F'ren wouldn't. And besides, F'sigger wasn't there, and C'nir would owe him for it.

“Sir. If I have erred....”

Sh'vek's lips twitched, half-admiring the man's recovery from his misstep. Clever, that: not admitting the mistake directly. “You have. M'arsen has provided a report of Flamestrike's casualties in your stead. Perhaps I should remind you that leadership of a Wing does not start and end with Threadfall? I expect my Wingleaders and seconds to follow certain protocols, and to do their jobs without shirking, not flitting here and there on a whim, or dallying where they shouldn't. I thought I'd made that clear enough to you some time ago.”

“Quite clear, sir,” F'ren said, smiling grimly. “I can offer you a full report at your convenience.”

“You believe you have something to add on the subject of individual riders, do you? Something beyond the ability of either M'arsen or myself to discern for ourselves?” Sh'vek did enjoy making the most of such opportunities to question the man's worth, especially when F'ren couldn't really counter it without offering insult. “Or was it your own actions you were thinking of?”

The bronzerider shook his head, and then, to Sh'vek's surprise, spoke again.

“With all due respect sir, neither of you were present. The performance of the weyrlings in particular-”

The Weyrleader slammed both hands down on the table, hard. “WHAT?” Surely F'ren hadn't just admitted to doing what he thought he had! Sh'vek stood up, and strode round to confront him. “Do I understand you correctly? You brought _Weyrlings_ into a Fighting Wing?”

 _They did exactly that,_ Ormaith informed him. _Trath says they needed them!_

_That's what the fardling first shift greens and blues are for!_

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” F'ren said coolly.

It was annoying that he couldn't be drawn in to attempting to defend his actions, but perhaps that _would_ be tantamount to flaming the same Thread twice. Sh'vek had heard all he needed to know to justify the punishment the man had coming to him. “I see. Refreshing to hear someone being honest about the amount of consideration they give their decisions.” He raised his voice for the benefit of the other men in the room. “Some of you could learn from F'ren here.”

F'ren's eyes narrowed in disgust, but he said nothing, so Sh'vek moved on.

“So. I'll speak to the Weyrlingmaster about the weyrlings whose trust you abused later. For now, there's another issue. Maenida.”

“May I ask how she is?”

As if he truly cared! “She lives. For now. The Healers say they'll know more later, but while we wait, why don't you start explaining what happened up there.”

Irritatingly unperturbed by Sh'vek's fixed glare, F'ren related his version of events. The man kept things brief, Sh'vek was pleased to hear, as that gave him more scope to delve deeper...though the unflappable front the man was putting on – had to be putting it on, surely! – could cause trouble. If he pushed too far, Sh'vek risked looking irrational. Especially when he suspected that the man was being truthful. No dragon could lie to a queen, and it'd be too easy for Kiath – or more realistically, Linnebith – to invalidate F'ren's story. No, he had to accept that the man had done nothing that might have hurt Maenida.

The question was, had his subsequent actions been adequate?

“What would you say was the interval between you observing Kiath drop into the cloud layer, and the time when you realised she was still there?” Sh'vek asked.

“We took out another stray Thread first.” F'ren looked pointedly at J'garray. “You don't descend into clouds right after another dragon, especially when she's likely to be holding a rescue steady while her rider visualises.”

If the other bronzerider had even noticed the implicit criticism directed at him, Sh'vek would be very surprised. “Go on.”

“We left it long enough for her to go _between_ before we followed. Trath had bespoken Gryth, checking he was stable...then we were in the clouds. After that...well, it couldn't have been more than a handful of heartbeats later that Trath told me she was still there. We knew something wasn't right then. That was when Trath contacted Ormaith.”

Sh'vek nodded thoughtfully. It matched his own memory well enough. “And yet...and yet, bronzerider, you _didn't_ leave things there, did you?”

“No,” F'ren snapped. “We attempted to save the life of another dragon!”

Good. Now he had him on this score too! “A well intentioned action, for which I commend you, F'ren. But that's not quite what I was talking about.”

“Sir?”

“Yes. The consequences of your other actions must also be taken into consideration. You made us aware of the problem, and should have left things there. Ormaith and Linnebith _were_ attempting to support Kiath, enough to get her back to the safety of the Queen's wing with Gryth. Linnebith was to take over the rescue, and they'd both return to the Weyr then.”

He paused for dramatic effect, and looked round the room at the other riders. “Instead, you disrupt our efforts, risk losing our Weyr's senior queen _between,_ and force Gryth to jump to his death!” Sh'vek took a step closer, and used every ounce of his presence to loom over the other bronzerider. “K'mek was blinded, his dragon in incredible pain, but all they had to do was hang on and wait – for a rescue that _you_ made impossible.”

Trath's rider nodded, and Sh'vek could almost taste the guilt and shame radiating out from him. It was no less than he deserved. “How do you suggest we deal with that, _bronzerider_?”

F'ren's face grew tight and controlled again, his gaze flashing up to meet Sh'vek's own. “Quite clearly, it's _not_ my decision to make. _Weyrleader_.”

“How right you are.”

Sh'vek slowly walked back round the table to his chair, leaving F'ren standing uncomfortably where he was. He was still pondering what else he might add to the man's punishment when the door opened once again, this time admitting an exhausted C'nir. M'wer rose to offer the Wingleader his usual chair back, but C'nir gestured for his wingsecond to stay seated as he tiredly straightened his posture.

“All burrows have been eliminated, sir,” he said.

That wasn't the news Sh'vek was after. Of _course_ they'd been eliminated: C'nir had had strict instructions not to return to the Weyr until the safety of the Holds had been assured, after all. “How _many_ of them, C'nir?”

“Twelve that the groundcrews from the Holds couldn't manage, three of them serious. Most of them got through in the middle of the Fall when Maenida was injured, but we also had to fire one of the small orchards above Riverbend, and some marginal grazing in the foothills close to the coast.”

“And the third serious burrow?”

“Fool groundcrews were sticking to the footpaths around the edges of their fields, instead of keeping a proper pattern. A handful of clumps got through onto a large field of barley, and no-one was close enough to deal with them before the Threads got properly entrenched, so they just panicked. By the time we got there they'd set up firebreaks all over the field, including downwind of the burrow. There wasn't much left for us to char by then, Thread _or_ crops, and we damn near suffocated checking to be sure. I gave the Holder a piece of my mind, I can tell you.”

Sh'vek nodded soberly. Chances were, that field would've been lost regardless without the firebreaks, but at least the Weyr couldn't be held accountable for the holders' ineptitude. “Thank you. I'll hear your full report later. We were discussing the state of the Wings, earlier.” Sh'vek briefly outlined the options under consideration.

“Eight lighter wings gets my vote.”

Sh'vek raised his eyebrows. That wasn't the answer he'd been after. He'd expected C'nir to favour the same option as G'dil; the two Wingleaders rarely disagreed, and even appeared to take it in turns for their dragons to fly Delene's. “You present a _most_ convincing case,” he drawled, raising a laugh from G'dil. “Seven Wings, I think, at least until spring. But that still leaves us with the question of who to promote to Wingleader. I _wa_ s thinking T'frik might be up to the job.”

He felt for Ormaith's presence, and asked the bronze to pass a message to C'nir's Telemath. _Tell him it's C'nir's job to explain how T'frik's promotion got put back another turn. If he's going to lose sight of his responsibilities like he did today, the last thing I want to do is deprive him of a valuable wingsecond_.

Smiling at C'nir, he continued. “There will have to be a few other changes.”

“Sir, I can lea-”

J'garray fell silent under Sh'vek's stare, and the Weyrleader's decision firmed. It was no use at all having a Wingleader who quailed so easily! “Deluge wing is being disbanded over the winter, and its riders split into the other wings. You'll be taking H'ersh's place in Flamestrike.” He'd be able to keep an eye on the man there, and if he couldn't knock some sense into him, he'd at least keep him out of trouble. “Ev'les?”

“Yes, Weyrleader?”

“P'vash...would you say his injury was poor judgement, or poor luck?”

“The latter, sir. He's overdue for promotion to wingsecond, and I think he'd do well in Thunderclap, if that's what you have in mind.”

“Not quite. I'm placing the injured and grounded pairs into a new Wing, under M'arsen's command, over the winter. P'vash will be second as soon as his dragon's healed enough to fly. Many of the Weyrlings will join that wing, along with a few others that I'll select over the next few days. They'll act as a reserve until the Weyr returns to full fighting strength. M'arsen, I'll speak to you about the placements later.”

“Aye, sir.”

One problem solved. M'arsen should've Impressed a bronze, but even as a brownrider he knew how to make himself useful to the Weyr. Reliable to a fault, and his dragon's colour made his loyalty assured. P'vash...well, that bronzerider was nothing special, but at least he'd toe the line. And coincidentally enough, the man seemed to have a bit of a rivalry with T'frik. There were many, many ways to destabilise a Wing, and all of them good for keeping any one Wingleader from having too strong a power base. Separating a Wingleader from his trusted seconds was a well-used ploy, but not subtle enough under the circumstances. Oh, he had C'nir's loyalty for now, but creating some friction between him and his second was far too good an opportunity to pass up. Especially with Maenida's life still in the balance.

That left G'dil and his wing. Sh'vek turned his attention back to F'ren, still standing stiffly to attention by the doorway.

“F'ren, I'm rewarding your diligence with twice-daily sweep rides. And as you saw fit to take them from their established duties during Fall, you'll also be joining the Weyrlings for their chores.”

“Yes, sir. Will that be all?”

“No.” Sh'vek wondered how much he could load the man with before he finally snapped. Every cold watch going? Cleaning the Weyr's sewers? No, he'd save those punishments for the man's next transgression. In the meanwhile, F'ren would be kept busy enough with his other duties. “I've decided to promote you to Wingsecond. Report to G'dil at first light tomorrow.”

A look of pleased surprise appeared on F'ren's face. “Thank you, Sir.”

Sh'vek waved a hand in dismissal. _Contingencies, Ormaith. Vallenka was very right about that._

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

_Now there was a Lord Holder_  
 _Of fame and renown_  
 _And a beautiful drudger_  
 _With one pretty gown._  
 _Oh, she never did frown,_  
 _Never did frown,_  
 _That beautiful drudger_  
 _With but the one gown!_

_As the winter grew colder_  
 _The rains falling down_  
 _With wine they grew bolder_  
 _Despite all the frowns._  
 _Oh, the people did frown_  
 _And gossip and frown_  
 _How could their Lord Holder_  
 _Let his Lady down?_

_But the Drudge and the Holder_  
 _At the very next gather_  
 _Their ranks left to moulder,_  
 _They drank and they swaggered,_  
 _They laughed and were merry_  
 _And danced past sundown_  
 _...and not so long after_  
 _her belly grew round!_  
 _Oh, she never did frown_  
 _At the gossip around_  
 _For she'd had a Lord Holder_  
 _With one pretty gown._

 

**Late afternoon, 17.11.34**

**Ista Weyr**

The Weyrwoman took a slow sip from her glass of chilled redfruit juice, and surveyed her quarters with a critical eye. The same old wall-hangings she'd been looking at for the last five turns, now a little frayed and dusty at floor level. The heavily ornate furniture favoured by the Weyrleader, which managed to gather dust at a horrific rate, and yet failed to provide any comfort to her aging body. And all of it suffering from too much humidity – no matter how often the drudges cleaned the room, there was always the faint whiff of mildew coming from somewhere.

It was past time for a change.

Vallenka settled back in her chair. “What do you think, Sh'vek? Do I dispose of the lot and start from scratch, or keep the more valuable items...if only to display them when whichever dignitary foisted them on us pays a visit?”

Sh'vek glanced quickly over her room's furnishings, clearly disinterested. “Vallenka, you're asking the wrong person. They're nothing to do with me, so you can sell 'em all for half-marks for all I care. Aren't some of them N'essen's things anyway?”

“Yes but he keeps them here at my sufferance. No, he won't complain. N'essen's always taken good care that _I_ know that _he_ knows his place.”

Her brother's laugh was filled with genuine amusement this time. “Ah, sister. You set quite an example for the rest of us.”

“Of course.” Vallenka smiled serenely, and took another sip of juice. “But you haven't answered my question.”

He shrugged. “Delene would probably be of more use to you. She sets great store in aesthetics.”

“Delene? Useful? Ha!” She shook her head, and motioned for him to sit down in one of her less frivolous chairs. “Dragons gossip worse than drudges, Sh'vek, and I've heard the talk.”

Sh'vek's lips twisted in annoyance, but – wisely – he chose to say nothing. She let her smile broaden, enjoying the power she held over her brother. She so rarely had the opportunity to exercise it, but for the second time that turn, _he_ was the supplicant. “Don't you want to know what I've heard, brother?”

“I'm sure I can guess,” he said evenly.

Vallenka dipped her head in acknowledgement of his control. Well, at least he'd recovered from that disturbing lapse on the day when Maenida had fallen ill.

“I believe I'll tell you in any case,” she went on. “By all accounts, Delene has been taking her duties very seriously, particularly her responsibility for appointments in the High Reaches Lower Caverns... how _is_ the new headwoman settling down into her job?”

“Egritte? About as well as Delene herself.”

“Don't tell me you're here for more supplies, Sh'vek. Again. Should I send a complaint to Weyrwoman Sonaldra at Fort?”

“To _that_ rank-conscious, pompous sow? I'll remind you that the High Reaches is an autonomous Weyr, Vallenka, well provided for by the Lords Holder whose lands we protect.”

“Especially by the weavercraft, no? Ah, I shouldn't try to rile you, brother. Old habits die hard; I'm sure you understand.”

“Rile me?'” Sh'vek barked a laugh. “Vall, the way my patience has been tested over the past month...well, you're not even scratching the surface.”

Vallenka leaned forwards and rested her chin on her thin fingers. “I imagine so. And I suppose I was expecting this visit. Maenida's showing no signs of improvement then?”

Sh'vek shook his head. “Yes and no. The Healers say her brain was bleeding, but can't decide what caused it. There was no sign of scuffing on her helmet, but that doesn't mean she didn't receive a blow of some kind...might have been firestone, spilled from the sacks on the brown's neck, falling faster than he was. Or maybe Gryth struck her accidentally, but we'll never know now. Or maybe it just happened. She was unconscious for three days, and even after that she only woke briefly, very confused. Kiath was very distressed. We used as little fellis as we dared, but a sevenday later she had another fit. Master Rynder claimed that her brain was under too much pressure from the bleeding – don't ask me how he knew – and that it was worsening. They cut out a piece of her _skull_ ; they said she'd die if they didn't.”

What a hideous image! Vallenka had always thought that carving bits and pieces out of a person's head was more likely to kill them faster, not stave death _off_. “Really? Are you sure they know what they're doing?”

“Apparently several of the Healercraft records recommend the treatment. Bloodthirsty lot. But it seemed to work, they told me. And she didn't die, either, which was far more than I dared hope for.”

“And since then?”

“The healers...they say they've seen similar cases in the records, brain injuries like this.”

“Can they treat her?”

“Oh, yes. Rynder says the brain's just like any other swollen organ. Maenida's fed her medicine twice daily, and it works marvellously.”

Sh'vek's bleak sarcasm told Vallenka all she needed to know. “I had heard she was still bedridden. Can't Rynder try something different?”

He lowered his grey eyes and shook his head. “Rynder's not the problem. It's all the fellis she's taking, on top of her other medicines.” When he looked up again, his gaze was almost feverishly intense. “Vallenka, it's a thread-cursed nightmare. She's _damaged_. Some from the injury itself, some from the swelling afterwards. Without the fellis, she hurts, and she can't stop herself from making Kiath feel it. She can barely walk, she hears sounds that aren't there, and she's an angry, emotional wreck. And Kiath doesn't understand, because Maenida can't communicate with her properly. _She can't hold more than the weakest of touches with her own dragon_! Not unless Ormaith or Linnebith is there with them, and Delene's as likely to spread Kiath's distress around the Weyr as she is to keep it controlled.” Obviously stressed, he clenched the arms of his chair with both hands. “So yes, it works _marvellously_. I can have a barely functional Weyrwoman at the expense of a deranged senior queen, or a sane, barely functional queen at the expense of a stupefied Weyrwoman.”

Vallenka realised that her jaw had dropped open while she'd listened to her brother's shocking news. What an abominable situation he and his Weyr were in! Still feeling stunned, she closed her mouth, then opened it again to speak. “Sh'vek! I had _no_ idea. My apologies, brother, for my lack of sympathy.”

“I've had your honesty. That's a good start.” He sighed, and looked over at the mouldering wall hangings – banal scenes of Gather dances and Harpers, with flowery borders.

Following Sh'vek's gaze, Vallenka decided that the wall hangings would go that very night. But first, the matter at hand. She had promised to help him, after all. “A start, but not enough. You need one of Ista's queens.”

Slowly, Sh'vek nodded. “Rynder says he expects improvements in Maenida's condition may occur, particularly as far as the head pains go...but there are no guarantees, and the Weyr needs a functioning Weyrwoman _now_.”

“Of course you do. I've actually been giving the matter some thought, you know.” It was quite true – she had – though she'd spent very little time on the choice of which queen Ista would be willing to give up. No, that had been a remarkably easy decision; it had been the favours and influence that she could demand in return that had occupied her mind. A bit of pressure on this Lord Holder or that Craftmaster, all to the benefit of Ista, and thus to Ista's Weyr. But this was a different matter now. Delene was clearly handicapped by her sensitivity, and while she might have managed running a Weyr alone, even as coddled and poorly trained as she was, it seemed that Maenida's... illness... was too much of a burden for any individual to shoulder.

“I had a feeling you might,” Sh'vek said. “Stringing me along is all part of your fun, isn't it?”

Vallenka didn't care to dignify that with a response. It was, and she'd been doing exactly that up until a few moments ago, but after hearing his news she was more willing than ever to help him as well as she could. And besides, what siblings _didn't_ treat each other in such a manner?

“Well? Do I have a choice?” he pressed.

“Do you?”

“Clever woman.” He looked away again, stood up, and began pacing around the room. “Serreni, Rahnis, Wissa.... What's the new girl called?”

“Uliwen.”

“She's out from the start. Still a weyrling, isn't she?”

“Mmm.”

“And the other younger one, Wissa. I had some impressive reports of her, you know. But I need someone with experience, and Helleath's not even three. Has she had her first mating flight yet?”

“She rose a couple of months ago. A very well-timed flight; she should lay and clutch in plenty of time to clear the Sands for Carth.”

“In another few turns I might have considered her, but not for this.”

“I'd need a lot of convincing before giving Wissa up. Growmor's aging fast now, and Ista will need Wissa's skill as a dragonhealer.” She'd been a little concerned that Sh'vek would ignore the girl's youth and inexperience, especially after seeing how well she'd coped with the aftermath of that disastrous threadfall at the High Reaches. No, even as skilled as she was, the High Reaches needed more experience than the girl could offer. A good thing, too: Helleath's northern breeding was of far more advantage to Ista than it would be to the High Reaches. Vallenka took another mouthful of juice, and waited for her brother to reach the inevitable conclusion.

“So. Serreni or Rahnis.” Pausing in his tracks, he looked thoughtfully back at his sister. “Serreni grows more like her mother every day, I'm told.”

Serreni was black haired and slight of figure, with a singing voice that even a Harper would envy, rich brown skin, and a long nose that emphasised the delicate perfection of the rest of her features. Not a bit like her father's side of the family at all. “Mmm. Now, that puts me in mind of a story I haven't thought of in a while. One of the old aunties in our Lower Caverns met someone at the last Gather who claims to know who Serreni's grandsire is, but she spins so many fanciful tales that another love affair between a pretty drudge and a Holder is no more believable than the rest. But I suppose if a pretty drudge's bastard can catch the eyes of a bronzerider, and if the bastard's bastard can Impress gold...well, if that's not a Harper's tale in itself....”

Her brother's pacing had taken him back to the far wall again, in front of one of the more gaudy gather-scenes. He pulled a stray thread free and idly let it drop to the floor. “Hardly an original one, Vall; I can think of at least half a dozen dreadful ballads on the theme without even trying. Besides, Seppetta caught more eyes than mine alone. Serreni could have been fathered by any one of half a dozen different men. Shells, Seppetta was even _married_ to one of them.”

“She may not resemble you the way your son did, but there's no doubt in my mind that Serreni's your daughter. Doubts aside, I know you'll always wish her well. She'll make a fine Weyrwoman, Sh'vek; I did have her training. The question is: where?”

“I'd welcome her in the High Reaches, you know that. But if I do lose Maenida....”

“If Maenida dies, you'll still have Delene.”

“If Delene's senior Weyrwoman, I'll need a damned good junior. _Junior_ ,” he stressed.

“Or a different Weyrwoman.” Vallenka was pretty sure that Sh'vek's doubts didn't stretch far enough to risk incest! Serreni'd have a Weyr of her own one day, but it wouldn't be her brother's. “I do see your problem Sh'vek. Besides, I do like the girl, and I'm loath to let her leave. Of course, that just leaves you with Rahnis.”

“Mmm.”

Vallenka stood up, and walked over to take her brother's arm. “Why don't we inspect Alaireth's eggs, and I'll tell you a little more about her.”

“Please do.”

She led him out of her rooms, and then down the narrow side-tunnel that led from the entrance to Carth's weyr down into the Hatching Grounds. Ista was unique in that three of the queens' weyrs had direct access to the Hatching Grounds. The Weyr's architect must have had it in mind to better Benden Weyr's original idea, but nowadays Vallenka really wished he hadn't: with four breeding queens in the Weyr, the Grounds were at their hottest almost permanently, and the humidity seeping into her own quarters was appalling. Yet another reason to transfer one of her juniors to another Weyr...though she didn't need to mention that fact to Sh'vek. “So. Alaireth was clutched nine turns back, in one of Carth's first clutches by N'essen's Trioth.”

“She's a little younger than Linnebith then.” Sh'vek paused at the top of the steps. “Remind me, was Trioth clutched by Ildrenth or Eylaroth?”

“Ildrenth, the junior gold, in one of her matings with Salkoth.” Vallenka rolled her eyes. “Do you want the full list? Dam out of Razinth by Kanyuth, sire out of Thyrith by Passandaleth.” The names would be almost meaningless to Sh'vek, but at least Trioth's lineage had plenty of them; no need to mention that Thyrith had flown like a thrown brick, or that Ildrenth had been so scatterbrained she'd once _lost_ three eggs on the hatching sands. No, Ista certainly hadn't lost out by the absence of gold eggs from either of _those_ queens.

“I thought Passandaleth was Carth's sire?”

“He was a relatively old bronze when Carth was clutched. Not far over Ormaith's age, in fact, but experience is as much an advantage as youth when it comes to queens.”

“More so, I'd say.”

Vallenka smiled to herself. “I rather thought you might. Her conformation's much the same as Carth's and she rises every ten months or so, but you can expect the gap to lessen a little in a Weyr with fewer queens. Anyway, you'll see Alaireth up close soon enough; what should I tell you about Rahnis?" She gestured for her brother to start down the steps ahead of her. “Perhaps I should ask your impression of _her_ , first?”

Sh'vek tilted his head in thought as they walked. “Quiet girl, late twenties, pretty nondescript. I've seen her at the odd Gather, usually in the same company. Doesn't seem the frivolous type. Rarely mentioned at the High Reaches, which hopefully bodes well for her competence?”

Vallenka let her face fall into an expression of mock outrage as Sh'vek glanced back over his shoulder. “Bodes well? Well of course she's competent, else I'd have transferred her elsewhere turns ago! Stubborn as the draybeasts she grew up with, she is, and she follows orders her own way. Oh, with the correct approach she's manageable enough...but you won't want to act hastily as far as she's concerned; the girl could probably hold a grudge until _between_ warms up. Still, she's got flaws enough to be exploited, provided you know where to look.”

Her brother nodded, clearly taking her advice on board. The steep tunnel brought them out at the edge of the tiered seating. Out on the sands Rahnis' gold, Alaireth, was dozing with her head tucked around the far side of her body. Her tail tip twitched uneasily as she dreamed, but she showed no signs of waking even once Vallenka had reached the base of the steps and walked onto the hot sands.

Sh'vek stopped at the edge of the sands and stared at the eggs, his hands rested on his hips. Vallenka watched his mouth move as he silently counted them up, frowned, then apparently began the count again.

“Is that all of them?” he asked her.

“If your count's thirteen, then yes.”

“Not many, for the middle of the Pass. Though they're a good size, I'll give you that. Bodes well for the heavier colours.”

Vallenka shrugged. The clutches Alaireth had thrown from her matings with Narnoth had always contained larger than average eggs, but the hatchling distribution had never differed much from those of any other queen in the records. “Do we look like a Weyr in need of a large number of new Weyrlings?”

“Quite. So, the girl _is_ capable of following orders, then?”

Feeling the heat from the sands more strongly than she'd like, Vallenka loosened her blouse and waited for Sh'vek to catch up with her. “I was wondering if you remembered what I told you when I visited.”

“Two queen eggs in two clutches, wasn't it? I'd have said as much to her myself, were I in your shoes.”

Vallenka let herself laugh, though not so loud as to wake Alaireth up. She'd have Rahnis summoned later, but didn't really want the girl around right at that moment. “Only if you knew the right leverage to use. But you're not in my shoes, are you?”

Her brother gave her a tight smile, clearly displeased by the reminder of his Weyr's deficiency in the number of its queens. “Apparently not. They were good-sized clutches then, the last two?”

“Surprisingly so; she'd never clutched more than two dozen eggs before, but both of those clutches numbered more than thirty eggs.” She eyed Sh'vek closely as she continued. “Thirty-two by Narnoth, and thirty-six by Trath. I'd have thought you'd have remembered that one, at least.”

“My dearest sister, you _asked_ me to send a bronze on that occasion. 'Any bronze, so long as he can wipe that self-satisfied smirk off the girl's face', as I recall.”

A feeble shot. The ploy hadn't worked at all – unusually, for one of her own making – but at least Sh'vek had ended up owing her more than she'd owed him. “So fortunate for you that Trath was unfit to repeat his spectacular performance when Kiath rose,” she reminded him.

“You got what you wanted out of it. Or didn't she stay humbled for long enough to suit you?”

Vallenka smiled again, enjoying the moment. “Does a clutch of thirteen suggest anything else? But she'll be your problem soon, Sh'vek. With Maenida's health the way it is, you need to look at your options. What happens if she dies at the _wrong_ time?”

“We're all hoping she doesn't die _at all,_ ” Sh'vek muttered, before giving her a resigned look and answering her question anyway. “With a clutch on the sands now?” he said, gesturing in Alaireth's direction. “No, it won't come to that. Linnebith will rise again well before next summer. If it becomes clear that Maenida won't recover, I'll be the one who chooses when to retire her. And if she does die...the healers said it would be sooner rather than later.”

“It could happen, Sh'vek. With queens, you never know. Especially if Linnebith were to become injured.”

"Even so...I fail to see the problem.” Reaching the nearest egg, he crouched down beside it and cautiously tested the feel of the shell with one hand. “She's manageable, you said, and the whole point of taking her on is that she's capable of running the place.”

The Weyrwoman frowned. She didn't really like the way her brother was dismissing her worries, but couldn't quite tell if he was playing a game of his own, or if it was just masculine bluster. With Sh'vek, it could easily be either. “She is, yes, but she's not the only piece on the board. Don't forget Alaireth's past mates. Rahnis is weyrmated to Narnoth's rider, and if I send her to you, M'ton will demand a transfer, that's certain. And then there's your problematic F'ren.”

“If she's that besotted, she'll hardly look kindly on F'ren!”

“Oh no, that's not an issue at all. The question is, what does he think of _her_?”

Sh'vek shook his head. “He's not a problem. Not one I can't handle, at any rate. And as for the weyrmate, well! F'ren proved his dragon can be outflown.”

A flicker of movement in the corner of her eye caught Vallenka's attention, and she twisted round to check the entrance to the Hatching Grounds. No, there was no-one there. Although...no, the gold still slept as well. If she hadn't woken when they'd approached the eggs, she was unlikely to do so any time soon. She turned back to her brother. “I wouldn't be too sure of that any more. F'ren set quite an example, even drove a rift between the two of them for a while. M'ton finally figured out what he'd been missing in Alaireth's flights, and sure enough, Ista had another queen egg on the sands. He's not inclined to let another dragon fly her even on the low flights, and if they join the High Reaches and you take away that restriction....” Vallenka lowered her voice. “Sh'vek, if that girl becomes senior, even the weight of your Weyr's support won't help Ormaith fly her queen, not if M'ton's there too.”

Sobered, he too turned to watch the slumbering queen. Her tail had stilled its movements, but her breathing was still deep and even. “If you're that serious about this being a problem...what do you suggest?”

Well, there were all manner of different options... and no need to fear the necessary changes. “I'll tell you everything you need to know about Rahnis, but not here. As for M'ton, I can make sure he's not a problem, if you wish,” she offered.

“So can I, I suppose, if it comes to that,” Sh'vek said slowly, straightening up again.

It was certainly possible, Vallenka decided. Sh'vek might not have had much luck in the past, but the schemes that had failed with F'ren would probably work better on the more easy-going, direct nature of a man like M'ton. But... aha! If her eyes didn't mistake her... yes, there was too much tension across the gold's back. Alaireth _was_ awake, but attempting to appear otherwise. Vallenka spun back towards the entrance, and started towards it. She'd not taken more than a dozen steps when Rahnis came into view, carrying a heavy bucket in one hand and a large mop under the opposite arm.

Interesting.

How much had the girl overheard? And should she warn Sh'vek?

Seeing Vallenka, Rahnis changed direction to walk towards the Weyrwoman rather than towards her queen. “Sorry Vallenka, Alaireth's been asleep,” she said with a shrug. “If I'd known you were waiting, I'd have been back sooner. Had you been waiting lo-” She broke off, standing on tiptoes to peer over Vallenka's shoulder, and identified Sh'vek standing beside the eggs. “Oh, greetings, Weyrleader.”

Innocent as a new-born babe. Aye, one born with a full measure of criminal subtlety. Such a pity that she'd never been able to cure the girl of that insolent streak. “I was just showing Sh'vek Alaireth's latest clutch,” Vallenka said.

Sh'vek walked over to join them, and stretched out a hand to clasp one of Rahnis'. “After what I've heard of the last few... it seems you control your dragon well.”

“Thank you.” The girl's over-wide brow creased into a frown, but she quickly turned away and lowered the heavy bucket to the ground, balancing the mop on top of it so as to keep it clear of the fine sand. When she straightened up her face was smooth again, except for an obviously forced smile. Rahnis _had_ heard enough, Vallenka decided. She stepped back, and let Sh'vek do the talking. As far as she was concerned, Rahnis was his problem now.

Sh'vek skipped the usual introductory small talk, and went straight to the issue at hand. “You'll have heard of our recent misfortune, I'm sure.”

Rahnis nodded. “It must be a difficult time for your Weyr, and for Delene too. I'm sure she's rising to the challenge as well as she can.”

Oh, it was amusing to watch someone else deal with the girl, Vallenka thought. She knew well enough why Sh'vek was there, and had subtly insulted his Weyr's training of Delene in the very same breath as commiserating with him. The insult wasn't lost on Sh'vek either, Vallenka could tell well enough from his expression...though he seemed uncertain of whether the comment had been intentional or simple lack of tact.

“As well as we'd expect,” he replied. “We don't know when Maenida will return to full health.”

'If' was the word he should have used, and Vallenka wondered if the girl realised.

“I'm sure the healers have done everything they can for her,” Rahnis said simply, her tone answering Vallenka's unvoiced question. Oh yes, she knew the score all right. Vallenka made a mental note to track down the girl's source of information.

“However...we have only one healthy queen pair at present. I'd rather not have the High Reaches in such a precarious position.”

“Oh?”

Rahnis's expression of feigned innocence almost caught Sh'vek out, and he gave his sister a questioning look. The message relayed from Ormaith via Carth was no less than she expected.

 _He says he was under the impression that the girl was smarter than that_.

Vallenka shook her head. _Tell him this is her usual attitude. She doesn't need him to explain things to her. Just spit it out._

Sh'vek took a step closer to the girl, and rested a hand companionably across her shoulder. Rahnis flinched slightly but concealed the movement well, raising a hand to tuck her dark hair behind her ears.

“I'll be honest,” her brother said. “The High Reaches needs another queen. Ista can spare one, and Vallenka believes you'd be best suited to our needs.”

Rahnis returned his direct stare without a trace of surprise. “Alaireth won't rise again for a while. With all of your losses...wouldn't Minith or Helleath be more appropriate?”

No, she certainly wasn't keen on the prospect of a move north! Vallenka stepped in quickly. “No. Aside from tending Alaireth, I'm relieving you from your other duties. You can spend the spare time before the hatching packing your belongings.”

Rahnis didn't look happy to hear that, but she quickly dipped her head in acquiescence. “Yes, Weyrwoman. Of course.”

As if she had any say in the matter! Pah! Gesturing that the girl was dismissed from her attention, she turned back to Sh'vek. “Well brother, shall we see what the kitchen's serving for supper?”

“Why not?”

They walked across the sands towards the main entrance, but, halfway there, Sh'vek stopped. “Contingencies,” he murmured before turning back towards the goldrider. “Rahnis!”

“Weyrleader Sh'vek?”

“You're weyrmated, aren't you? I hear M'ton's a very able rider; we've an opening for another Wingleader, if he's interested.”

Rahnis looked briefly surprised, then nodded. “Thank you, Sir, I'm sure he will be. Ah...did you have any particular Wing in mind?”

“Oh, I expect there'll be a lot of changes in the High Reaches over the next few months, but don't you worry, I'll find something suitable for him.” With a few long strides, he caught up with Vallenka again. “I wonder if he might work well with F'ren?”

Vallenka smiled. “Not if _you_ have any say in the matter, I'm sure!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

_At every feeding check your dragon_  
 _For the softness of her hide_  
 _Concentrating, track your fingers_  
 _Over belly, joint and wing_  
 _Learn to recognise discomfort_  
 _Don't neglect the slightest thing_  
 _Itchy hide will flake untended_  
 _Oil it well to see it mended_

_At every feeding check your dragon_  
 _For the softness of her hide_  
 _Weyrling dragons grow with speed_  
 _And every part is prone to stretches_  
 _When your dragon has matured_  
 _Tend to where her body flexes_  
 _Flaky hide will crack untended_  
 _Oil it well to see it mended_

_At every feeding check your dragon_  
 _For the softness of her hide_  
 _Even when the hide is supple_  
 _Should your touch elicit twitches_  
 _Oil and massage long and well,_  
 _Actively preventing itches._  
 _Cracking hide when left untended_  
 _Causes harm that can't be mended_  
 _Cold between will scar the tissue_  
 _Normal flight becomes an issue_  
 _Injury will follow fast_  
 _Such a flight may be your last_  
 _Check your dragon's hide with care_  
 _Oil it, oil it, everywhere._

 

**Late afternoon, 17.11.34**

**Ista Weyr**

 

Rahnis watched the two Weyrleaders leave, and waited a good minute to be sure they weren't coming back again before moving. She tucked the mop back under one arm, and reached down for the bucket with the other, but either someone had filled it with rocks while she hadn't been watching, or her strength had deserted her. She choked back a laugh, and tried again.

 _Dear Rahnis, don't let them worry you!_ Across the sands, Alaireth had abandoned her pretence of sleep and had begun to turn her eggs, pausing only to be certain that her rider wasn't too flustered. _You told me it_ might _be us they'd choose_.

 _Oh yes, I know. But I still don't understand! Why didn't they pick Serreni and Minith_?

 _I don't know. If they said anything, it was elsewhere, or before I woke_.

Bless the dragon for taking things so literally! “No matter. We learned more than enough as it is.” Too much. She'd have to speak to M'ton soon, and maybe F'ren too. He deserved to hear what she'd learned, and maybe he could help her decide how much to tell M'ton. Because, while she wanted to tell him everything, she had a feeling that some of it he simply wouldn't hear. Where to start? Following the ache in her arms, Rahnis let her eyes drop down to the bucket. Well, that was the obvious choice, wasn't it?

“Anyway, now that I've lugged this oil all the way over from the Weyrling Barracks, we may as well make use of it.”

 _Yes, please. There's a patch on my belly that's a little drier than I'd like_.

Rahnis placed the bucket of oil beside her dragon and stared, smiling, into the nearest of Alaireth's whirling eyes. Seemingly all at once, all her worries melted away, nothing else mattering except the shared contact between dragon and rider. If she thought about it, she could sense the gentle mental pressure pulling her inwards...but that was an easy thought to resist. Worries could wait.

 _Of course they can_. Alaireth blinked her inner eyelids, and lay down on the sands, lifting her wings far enough out of the way to allow her to roll onto her side. Other riders might oil their dragons' bellies from standing, but trying that with a gold would leave you with oil running down your front, back, through your hair and into your eyes. Every weyrwoman had her own technique, but this was the one Alaireth preferred.

The goldrider pulled a soft brush from out of her pocket, and deftly brushed the loose sand from the Hatching Cavern floor away from Alaireth's belly. She ran her fingers along her dragon's hide, concentrating on the sensations felt by the dragon. The skin was still rather stretched from Alaireth's recent clutch, though it was tightening up nicely again, and yes, that was the driest area, there. Rahnis stepped back to the bucket of oil, dunked in the mop, and carried it, dripping, back to the gold. Getting the oil on your dragon was quick work with a mop; it was getting it rubbed in that was the time-consuming part! Setting the mop aside again, she flexed her fingers and slowly began working the oil into Alaireth's hide with light, steady circling motions of her hands. She was soon humming tunelessly along with the soothing rhythm, the time passing almost unnoticed while Alaireth filled her head with visions of cloudscapes and sea-scenes, memories of all the calm moments they'd shared that the dragon had dredged up from out of her rider's mind.

_There. That's better. Now come and sit down, and we'll work things out._

Rahnis stepped back quickly to let Alaireth change position, then settled down between her dragon's forelegs. _I feel much better now. Thank you._

_That was the idea._

_I know, dearest. Now, what was the first thing you remember hearing?_

_They were discussing my clutches, and why I must fly low. That Ista doesn't need more Weyrlings._

There was an undercurrent of uncertainty in Alaireth's mental voice, and it almost broke Rahnis' heart to hear it. They shouldn't have to control themselves this way, but this was the price they had to pay, being a weyrmated junior pair. And it was true, Ista _was_ overpopulated. And it was also true, Rahnis knew, that Alaireth was only doing it for her, that she yearned to throw aside all of Ista's restrictions. She stifled the thought quickly - when both dragon and rider were willing to do anything for each other's sake, awareness of unbalanced debts could be needlessly upsetting. And if they were moving north to the High Reaches, at least that would be one problem they'd be leaving behind. _Ista doesn't need more Weyrlings, but I think the High Reaches does._

_Then that must be why they chose us!_

Rahnis laughed with delight at her dragon's mocking mental tone. _Oh, if only it were that simple. And what did they say after that?_

The gold thought for a moment before answering. _No, that was all they said before Ormaith's rider told how Trath came to be here that day. And I told you all of that, and you heard the rest yourself._

"So I did. But what do you think of it all?”

_I think you will be glad to leave Ista._

Leaning back against the gold, Rahnis sighed. _Glad to leave Vallenka, but I don't know that Sh'vek's High Reaches'll be any better._ She had friends here, a home, a life, a weyrmate. M'ton and Narnoth could transfer with them, true, but she'd heard the rest as well. Vallenka could...could what? And what had Sh'vek meant by telling the Weyrwoman that he could deal with M'ton himself, only to then turn right around and offer _her_ a transfer for him as Wingleader? Rahnis had a good idea that F'ren would know what they could expect; yet another reason to ask Alaireth to bespeak Trath. But, Vallenka's other comments still niggled at the corner of her mind. What _did_ F'ren think of her? She'd only seen him twice since that day, and he'd kept himself distant on both occasions. _What about M'ton and Narnoth_?

_I'd like them to come with us, and you'd like them to come with us, and when we tell them the news, they'll want to come with us too. But you're worried for them, aren't you?_

“Yes,” Rahnis whispered.

_We make good decisions together, but it would be unfair to make this one without them. I've spoken to Narnoth. Their Wing has finished their drill, and M'ton is washing, but he'll join us in a few minutes._

_Thank you, dearest._

It wasn't long before a figure appeared silhouetted in the entrance to the hatching cavern. M'ton hurried across the sands towards her. His deeply tanned skin was still beaded with moisture from his bath, and his half-open shirt clung to his back and shoulders. “Narnoth said it was important, but not what, or why? It's not the eggs, is it, love?”

She shook her head, and a smile of relief broke across her weyrmate's face. He circled his arms around her waist, and she tilted her head up to meet his lips.

“Mmm. What is it then?” he asked.

His dark eyes were twinkling, probably with the expectation of a covert tryst, Rahnis decided, and though it was a rather tempting prospect, she really couldn't keep the news from him any longer. “I'm being transferred. To the High Reaches.”

M'ton's face fell. “I was sure it'd be Serreni. So were you, weren't you?”

“I know, I know. Apparently...not.”

“Was it N'essen who broke the news, or Vallenka?”

“Weyrleader Sh'vek, actually.”

“Sh'vek? He came _here_?”

“Yes.”

M'ton let her go, and scratched at his earlobe, thoughtful. “And he's still here?”

“I expect so. He went with Vallenka to eat lunch in the Lower Caver- Wait! Where are you going?”

Bemused, Rahnis watched her lover slow down and turn to face her almost halfway back to the Weyrbowl. “I can still catch him, ask for a transfer!” he shouted, still jogging backwards. “He's bound to take me on if I tell him I'll settle for Wingsecond. Shells, I'd go as a mere wingrider. He can't deny me a transfer then!”

“M'ton, no! You don't need to!”

He stopped properly this time, and walked slowly back to her. “I don't?”

“No.” Rahnis shook her head and smiled apologetically at him. “Sh'vek's offering you a _Wing_.”

The bronzerider grunted a surprised laugh, and kissed her again. “He is? Shells, woman, why in Faranth's name were you looking so upset, then?”

“Because....” Rahnis's words trickled away, unspoken, as she realised how ridiculous the whole thing sounded. That even though she was being transferred as a junior queen – and that _must_ be the reason Serreni wasn't going, because Vallenka surely wouldn't let her favourite moulder as a powerless junior – that even despite that, because there was a small chance she _might_ end up as Weyrwoman to the High Reaches...what, exactly? Sh'vek would somehow try to split them up, just in case? Or Vallenka would act first, just on the off-chance that it might be useful to her brother? No. She decided to tell him the rest of what she'd heard.

“When F'ren-”

M'ton interrupted her before she could finish speaking. “F'ren? You're afraid he'll send his dragon after Alaireth again?”

She grimaced. Yes, she suspected he might, but that egg wouldn't hatch until another day, another time, a long way from Ista. “That, too, I suppose,” she said with a sigh. “But Alaireth heard them talking before I arrived. M'ton, Vallenka _asked_ Sh'vek to send him. To hurt me. Us.”

M'ton shook his head. “I still don't understand how Alaireth let him do it – or why you spent so long with him afterwards – but you told me yourself he was sent here on _Sh'vek's_ whim, that it was all just a bad coincidence of timing.” He looked away for a while, then back at her again. “There's nothing you're not telling me, is there? I know a lot of women would-”

“Of course not! Nothing like that.”

“What, then? Because right now, you don't seem at all pleased that we'll be leaving _together_ , love.”

The trouble with dragonriders was that they were always too damned intuitive; that, or just not quite intuitive enough. Rahnis often thought that the weyrbred were worst in this, so accustomed to everyone jumping to the right conclusions that they forgot about the significance of all the steps in between. “They were talking about other things too. About you. M'ton...I love you, M'ton, and I don't want to lose you....”

“You're _worried_ about losing me?”

“Yes,” she said.

He squeezed her shoulders reassuringly, sighed, and bent his head slightly to kiss her forehead. “I know you and Vallenka have never really got along, but the look on your face...you'd think they were planning to roast my balls for breakfast, or something. You worry too much. There's nothing that'd stop me following you, not to the High Reaches, or even round the whole world and back again.”

Rahnis laughed softly, feeling an echo of the same thought reaching her from Narnoth, and knowing that both rider and dragon meant it. “And when we get there?”

“Sh'vek's offered me a Wing, you say. He'd hardly do that if he-”

“F'ren had a wing.”

“ _Had_ , dear, _had_. Leave the man to fester in his own mistakes.” M'ton gestured expansively to the north, then thumbed his chest in emphasis. “There's nothing there that I'm like to duplicate. You're the only woman for me, you know that. And if it's Alaireth's flights that worry you...I made a mistake, blaming you, I know that. Should've known it back then, too. You _know_ Narnoth'll fly his heart out for you.”

“Of course I do,” she said.

M'ton smiled lovingly at her, and she felt her worries begin to melt away again.

“And if he can't.... Well, I don't _have_ to like the thought of it, but I won't let it get in the way, not again. Trust me.”

Rahnis nodded. He was right, she supposed. Really, it was incredibly unlikely that she'd ever make senior at the High Reaches, so things'd be no different to here in Ista at all. Sh'vek wouldn't need to... whatever. Let him and the Weyrwoman waste time worrying about it, because it didn't need to matter at all, not if she chose not to let it! And she would.

 _We will_ , Alaireth echoed. _Narnoth and M'ton too._

M'ton pulled her closer, his voice prodding her out of her thoughts again. “Besides, I doubt their bronzeriders are any different to the ones down here. All arrogant swagger, chasing skirts at the holds whenever they're not bragging to their wingmates, and _never_ seeing the uncut diamond right under their noses.”

She rolled her eyes and pulled a face. This was such an old joke between them, but it meant a lot to her, that he saw so much in her. “You idiot. I just don't look at them the way I do you.” She batted her eyelids in mock allure, and he growled and kissed her again, tumbling her onto the sand.

Rahnis shrieked in laughter as the world up-ended. She caught a brief glimpse of Alaireth's whirling blue eyes and then the cavern's ceiling before she found M'ton's face again. The sand was blistering hot beneath her thin clothes and she grimaced, though without really caring.

“Sorry.” M'ton tugged her to one side, and soon he was beneath her, braving the sand's heat as stoically as he could. A steady trickle of fine grains was raining down on him from her hair and clothes, and before he could help himself, he sneezed. “Argh. This doesn't really work, does it?” Ignoring her giggles, M'ton hauled Rahnis upright again, and kissed her on the nose. “You've got sand in your clothes,” he whispered, cheeks dimpling as he smiled.

“Well, there's only one thing we can do about that,” Rahnis murmured back. She took one last look towards the bowl, and saw Narnoth already silhouetted in the cavern's entrance. For a while at least she and her weyrmate could share their happiness undisturbed.

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

_Weyrlings, Weyrlings, listen well._   
_You owe your dragons perfect care._   
_An un-oiled hide will itch and tear._   
_Weyrlings, learn your lessons well!_

_Weyrlings, Weyrlings, listen well._   
_You owe your dragons perfect care._   
_Don't let her eat more than her share._   
_Weyrlings, learn your lessons well!_

_Weyrlings, Weyrlings, listen well._   
_You owe your dragons perfect care._   
_Good straps need strength, not useless flair._   
_Weyrlings, learn your lessons well!_

_Weyrlings, Weyrlings, listen well._   
_You owe your dragons perfect care._   
_Drill on the ground before in air._   
_Weyrlings, learn your lessons well!_

_Weyrlings, Weyrlings, listen well._   
_You owe your dragons perfect care._   
_Recall the sights of here and there._   
_Weyrlings, learn your lessons well!_

_Weyrlings, Weyrlings, listen well._   
_You owe your dragons perfect care._   
_So keep a sack of firestone spare._   
_Weyrlings, learn your lessons well!_

_Weyrlings, Weyrlings, listen well._   
_You owe your dragons perfect care._   
_If you would be a fighting pair,_   
_Weyrlings, learn your lessons well!_

 

**Mid afternoon, 18.11.34**

**High Reaches Weyr**

 

Stripped to the waist, F'ren worked the hand pump outside the weyrling barracks as briskly as he could, filling the bucket almost to the brim with cold water. This was the fifth bucket so far, and would hopefully be enough to finally rid his skin of the stink of dragonshit. He picked up the cracked wedge of soap again and stared thoughtfully at it, wondering how little of the icy water he could get away with and still work up a good lather.

 _It's not that cold!_ Trath said, still highly amused by the whole event.

F'ren grimaced and let a little of the hard tingling ache in his fingers slip across to his dragon. _Do I look like a dragon to you?_ Still, he'd only get colder if he kept on procrastinating. The bronzerider hunkered down into a crouch beside the bucket and set to work with soap and water.

“Hope you're better at ducking Thread than you are at-”

“Shut it, B'risten.” If he ignored the brownrider, he'd probably go away before F'ren gave into his urge to thump him. The Weyrlingmaster's assistant had Impressed one of the other dragons from Trath's clutch, but, although they'd shared a mutual friend in A'minek, F'ren had never really liked him much. Particularly not today. Helping the weyrlings out with their chores was really no worse a punishment than anything else Sh'vek had landed him with over the turns, but B'risten seemed to think it stretched to any dirty job he didn't fancy doing himself. Today's unwelcome task had been helping a rather embarrassed weyrling with his constipated blue's thick tail. F'ren _had_ been standing well clear, at least until the young dragon had decided to _twitch_ at the wrong time....

He sniffed at one arm, and decided to keep scrubbing.

 _Winth's rider is apologising again,_ Trath informed him. _  
_

_He owes it to his dragon, not to me. His blue's got the best conformation of the whole clutch, and he's trying to feed him up into a brown or a bronze. Fool boy._

Finally as clean as he'd ever get without a long soak in a hot bath, F'ren poured the last of the soapy water down the drain and straightened up, trying not to shiver.

“Here, catch.”

He looked round in time to see a bright red shape flutter past him; with a quick stretch of his arm he hooked it out of the air before the wind could take it out of reach and blow it into a puddle. There were buttons running up one side of the fabric, and what looked like two sleeves, so presumably it had to be a shirt of some description. F'ren glared at the greenrider who'd gone to fetch it for him from the laundry. "What'd you do, H'koll, _bleed_ on it?”

The burly greenrider barked a laugh, and openly leered. “Well, if you don't want it....”

“Ha, ha.” F'ren rolled his eyes and stuffed his left arm into the sleeve; he'd seen that particular look on H'koll's face too many times before. As far as the shirt went, garish was better than nothing, and if he concentrated on it hard enough perhaps he could avoid certain _other_ memories that were likely to spring to mind. The small bone buttons were a little too fiddly for his half-numb fingers, and he gave up halfway through, but at least the shirt itself was a good fit. Too good, perhaps, but then H'koll did know more than his fair share about good tailoring. “What's happening with my old one?”

“Shenla's having it burned, I'm afraid. Cursed me to the Red Star and back for polluting her laundry with it, then sent it off with one of the drudges.” H'koll picked up F'ren's felted woollen jumper from where it had been draped on a fence post, and handed it over. “I wouldn't worry about it though. I'm sure young A'kent'll save up his marks and get you a new one made.”

“Tell him to wait. I saw the fabric that came in with the last tithe! I'd probably be better off sticking with this one for now.”

F'ren pulled the jumper over his head, glad to be wearing something warm again. His heavy wherhide coat came next, now adorned with the shoulder-knots of a wingsecond. One step at a time, one step at a time. He tugged his scarf from his coat pocket, and was adjusting it around his neck when a thought occurred to him. “Did R'fint send you to fetch me earlier, H'koll?”

The greenrider leaned back against the fence, propping his elbows up on the pale wood. “Course he did. What, you think lounging around out here watching you dress is my idea of fun?”

F'ren gave him a bland stare, not wanting to give H'koll the satisfaction of any other response. The greenrider cracked first, and spoke again.

“There's no rush though. He's just sending the senior class out on their sweeprides, and wanted a word before you went out yourself.”

Probably just to sort out the details of when he'd next be doing chores with the Weyrlings, F'ren reckoned, nodding at the greenrider. Thread wasn't due to fall again until the following evening, but he had drills and meetings scheduled for the whole morning already. “Guess we should go and find them.”

The senior weyrlings were clustered in the very centre of the Weyrbowl, a good few minutes walk from the barracks. It gave the young dragons plenty of room in which to train, free of the dangers of unwanted collisions with the inner walls of the Weyr itself, and far from the busier areas of air near the entrance to the Lower Caverns. The current senior class of weyrlings was still a good half-turn away from graduating to the fighting wings, and in addition to all their practice flaming falling ropes and moving in formation, a good part of their time was spent on building up their endurance, flying long sweeprides out into the surrounding countryside. Learning landmarks well enough to go _between_ to a certain location was only the beginning; you only _really_ knew a place when you'd flown over it many, many times, in every type of condition you might expect. You got to know the thermals, the updraughts, the prevailing winds...without that knowledge, even the quickest reflexes in the world wouldn't save you if something went wrong during Fall.

“How are they getting on, these ones?” he asked H'koll as they walked.

“You're asking me?” the greenrider replied with a chuckle. “I'm sure R'fint only wanted me as an assistant because I'm the closest thing to a crafter this side of the nearest Hold.”

“Then you're starting the job with more talent than B'risten ever had.” As much as he wished that Trath was a little _less_ friendly towards H'koll's green, F'ren still thought of the older rider as a good friend. H'koll's predecessor had been one of those who'd died in the recent tragedy, and the greenrider was probably still getting used to his new role. “I had much the same kind of doubts when L'sard gave me my first set of second's knots, you know,” he added reassuringly.

“Hard to imagine you being doubtful, even at that age.”

F'ren stopped walking, and looked the greenrider in the face. “The brown wingseconds _know_ they've won their rank on merit. But the bronzes? C'mon, look at J'garray! He's got almost as little credibility in this Weyr as I do. No. No, I didn't think I was good enough at the time, and I wasn't, either. But L'sard knew all that, and taught me what I needed quickly enough. It's the ones without doubts that do the most damage.”

“Look at J'garray, indeed,” H'koll muttered. “Thanks. There's a lot to it, teaching the youngsters, but I guess I'm picking it up.”

“Course you are.”

As they picked up their pace again, F'ren decided to repeat his earlier question. “So, your weyrling class. How _are_ they doing?”

H'koll laughed, and shook his head. “Faranth, they think they know everything at that age, that they're ready to be off fighting Thread already, when they'd be better off still attached to their foster-mothers' aprons. Apron-strings would probably do a better job of keeping them on their dragons, too. I've had to dangle quite a few of them by their own shoddy straps, but if they won't listen to plain sense, scaring them into it's the next best thing.”

“They'll learn.”

H'koll's eyes grew distant. “Aye, most of them. Not the pair we lost yesterday, _between_. Thought they'd got past that stage already.”

Two faces swam into F'ren's memory, not as he'd last seen them, but as he'd known them best. Audrealle, all bright laughter and flirtatious dimples...and A'minek, confident and daring, more brother than friend. He'd lost other friends before then, and since, but those two had hurt the most. “It can happen to the best of them,” he admitted, slowly. “Just one small mistake, and then they're gone.”

F'ren walked the rest of the way towards the weyrlings in a sober silence, lost in his memories of his first few turns in the Weyr. Life in the High Reaches had proved to be very different to his old life in Boll, and he'd had to make a lot of adjustments, not least getting used to the cold of a northern winter. The edge of an idea started to form in the bronzerider's mind. Was H'koll still earning extra marks with his leathercraft? F'ren had just decided to ask him about it later when he heard the Weyrlingmaster calling him by name. F'ren scanned the group of youngsters ahead of him, and found the Weyrlingmaster just appearing from beneath the belly of one of the dragons. “R'fint. You wanted to speak to me?”

“Yes, I did.” The Weyrlingmaster crossed the gap at a quick jog, glancing back over his shoulder just the once, no doubt to check that the Weyrlings were still behaving themselves. “H'koll, would you see the last trio off to Tillek for me? Good.”

As H'koll walked away, F'ren found himself the subject of a strangely direct stare from the weyrlingmaster, very much the kind of look he'd have expected if he were a weyrling who'd been caught up to no good. _What's up, Trath? Do you hear anything from Earith?_

_No, nothing._

At last, R'fint dropped his eyes with a sigh. “F'ren. I've left you and Trath with the stretch out towards the Crom borders.” He grimaced apologetically. “The wind's getting a little iffy, but at least you've the experience to deal with it.”

“Nothing we can't manage,” F'ren replied mildly, and raised an arm to beckon Trath down from his perch on the Weyr's rim. Surely that couldn't be all that R'fint had to say? “Was there anything else?”

R'fint looked up into the air, and both riders watched Trath begin his glide towards the ground. “I think I'm going to have to ask Sh'vek to relieve you of all these weyrling-chores,” he said eventually.

“Why?” The question was out of F'ren's mouth before he could help himself, leaving the correct response of ' _yes, sir, thank you sir_ ' far behind.

“It's a mistake. You know what weyrlings are like.”

The Weyrlingmaster stared at him again, and F'ren realised that the last statement had in fact been a question. Where was R'fint going with this? “Weyrlings? Why, they're overenthusiastic idiots, eager to be the brave, proud dragonriders they're destined to be?” he tried.

“And?”

F'ren laughed. “And rebellious little monsters, hating the early starts and the freezing lake water and everything else, and challenging authority whenever they dare because they're _dragonriders_ , Faranth help them!”

“And?”

Apparently, even that wasn't enough. He thought for a while, trying to figure out what he was missing. Finally, he saw it. “Ah. And in the rare cases when they _don't_ challenge their seniors...they fixate on them, idolising them.” F'ren shook his head, again remembering his own weyrling days. The cliques, the fantasies, the hero worship. All the while, yearning to impress the _real_ dragonriders. Who was he to the Weyr's current weyrlings? Not just the bronzerider who was sharing their chores this month, but also the one who dared risk Sh'vek's displeasure, the one who'd invited the previous senior class of weyrlings into the fighting wings, of all things! An outsider who could all too easily inspire some of those young riders to start exerting their own individuality, in all the wrong ways. Weyrlings could die, doing that.

“Idiots,” he said. Still, at least it was a good way to get out of that particular punishment earlier than planned. “So, no more chores. Can't say I'm disappointed by that. Do you think _you_ can get it past our Weyrleader, though?”

R'fint was plainly unamused that F'ren might question his standing with the Weyrleader. “Sh'vek's a far better Weyrleader than you give him credit for. Perhaps I'll just call you a corrupting influence, encouraging dissent?” he suggested.

“Yeah, that'd probably work,” F'ren said as Trath landed. He walked up to his dragon, slapped the bronze affectionately on the foreleg and, conscious of H'koll's earlier complaints about the weyrlings, started to give his flying straps a quick once-over. R'fint joined him beside his dragon before F'ren's checks were done.

“It had better work,” the Weyrlingmaster said quietly. “I don't approve of strife in the Weyr. It's hard enough beating it out of the Weyrlings without you causing trouble all the time. It's not good for the Weyr.”

“Clever old R'fint, appealing to my sense of _duty_.” F'ren bit the words out harshly, not caring enough to restrain his pique. Not good for the Weyr? Faranth, he was the _least_ of the High Reaches' problems! “Aye, I'll keep as low a profile as I can from now on,” he added. “Trust me.”

“Please do.”

As R'fint left, F'ren grabbed a handhold on the broad strap circling Trath's neck, sprang onto the dragon's proffered foreleg, and climbed into place between the last two neck ridges. His gloves and flying helmet were clipped onto the straps; the bronzerider carefully donned each item and buckled the loose straps back onto his belt.

 _Crom, is it? Ready?_ his bronze asked.

_Yes, and I'm ready._

Trath leaned back on his haunches and sprang strongly up into the sky, his wings making their first down stroke well before the initial momentum of his leap had died away. It was a smooth transition into the air, a far cry from the head-jerking flights of the weyrlings. The dragon made a tight spiral of his almost-vertical ascent, almost too dizzying for his rider. F'ren closed his eyes and let the dragon get on with it; if Trath wanted to practise the type of launch he'd need while chasing a queen, he wasn't going to complain about it. _Show off_ , he told the bronze once they were flying horizontally again.

 _Sorry_ , Trath said, without an ounce of chagrin. _Kiath was watching_.

She might well have been, but that had never made much difference to their luck to date; Maenida was utterly devoted to the Weyrleader, and Kiath couldn't help but reflect her rider's heart when she rose. The pair of them had been weyrmated for as long as F'ren had been at the High Reaches. F'ren had long suspected that it was primarily Kiath who held the Weyrleader's interest, but that didn't make things any easier for Trath. _A little warning, next time?_

The dragon didn't answer, letting his exuberant flying do the talking. As the scenery rolled away beneath them, F'ren found himself infected by his dragon's high spirits. Yes, it was still damned cold, but the High Reaches were beautiful, his dragon was the best in the Weyr, and flying together without fear of Thread was a sharding good way to spend an afternoon. Far better than dealing with weyrlings or wingmates! F'ren looked back over his shoulder at the dwindling peaks of the seven spindles. The rest of his new Wing would all be inside somewhere, he supposed. Mending straps, oiling dragons, gossiping over a mug of klah round one of the hearths in the Lower Caverns, or spending some time alone with their weyrmates. He smiled, not the least bit envious of all the comforts he was missing.

The mountains of the High Reaches steadily grew in size over the next hour of their northwards flight, then abruptly the landscape opened out into a broad glacial valley. Trath banked to the east, moving up the valley and higher into the mountains, keeping at a fixed distance from the edge of the valley where the crosswinds were at their most predictable. He was still flying fast, turning their sweep into an exercise in endurance. At this rate, three more hours flying time round towards the south-east would take them to Keogh Hold, but there was little purpose in heading in that direction. This part of the mountains were impassable to the landbound, no roads crossed the wide glacier, and there was certainly nothing to protect against the depredations of Thread. There were a few fertile valleys in other parts of the mountains, popular with herders and wherries, but while those were worth scouring in detail from the air, the barren glacier assuredly was not. F'ren kept Trath on his eastwards course, blinking _between_ from landmark to landmark so as to pass that part of their route as quickly as possible.

Aside from Trath's constant battle with the wind,the relative boredom of their flight above the glacierwas almost relaxing. F'ren knew he'd be lucky to find a similar chance at any time during the next few days, and tomorrow would be especially busy. Most of the time he found himself enjoying being a wingsecond again; G'dil wasn't an obnoxious man, and provided F'ren's ideas were phrased with suitable respect, the Wingleader was more than happy to listen to his suggestions. Of course, G'dil had certain expectations in return. He preferred to leave the disciplining of Thunderclap Wing to his seconds, and much of the administration too. If F'ren wasn't assembling tallies of firestone or herdbeast consumption, he was jogging around the weyrbowl with the riders being punished for tardiness, inspecting kit, or running yet another round of drills. It was exhausting work, and much of it far too inefficient to be of any real use to the Wing. Still, after almost a month of flying with them, F'ren certainly felt that he had a good feel for his wingmates now: which of the riders and dragons could be relied upon for certain tasks or types of flying, and which ones didn't pull their weight or were most likely to make dangerous mistakes. And if R'fint did get him relieved of the weyrling chores as well, why, then he might even be able to find time for some of the women in the Lower Caverns again!

 _Don't be too sure of that_ , Trath pointed out.

 _Oh_?

Y _ou think that every few days. What happens the next time the Weyr runs out of butter, or someone has to fetch Delene's flamethrower from Tillek, or check some documents with the old Headwoman at the Hold, and..._

 _Yes, yes! I get the picture._ Unable to deny that his dragon was most probably right, F'ren scowled at the empty landscape. They were overflying barren foothills again, but they'd soon reach the fertile alpine valleys around Ogren Hold. It was just about the only place he _hadn't_ visited during the last few sevendays!

Things hadn't seemed so bad during the first handful of days after the disastrous Riverbend 'fall. Maenida had still been gravely ill of course, but at least the Weyr had Delene and Linnebith. With the help of the borrowed healers and the young weyrwoman's haphazard skill at talking to dragons other than her own, the Weyr had managed to maintain its fighting strength throughout the next few threadfalls with barely any new injuries at all. It had been a visible struggle for the queenrider at times, bearing the pain and distress of so many recovering dragons at once, but her insight was a huge boon to their recovery and had even saved a few lives. Chances were, the Weyr would have been almost back to normal by now if that had been the only responsibility that Delene had been forced to shoulder.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

As far as F'ren had been able to ascertain, Sh'vek had ordered the Weyr's Headwoman to leave the Weyr in the hours soon after the Riverbend Fall. Delene had been charged with choosing a replacement for Hendra, and had selected one of the more pushy Lower Caverns women. Faranth only knew what criteria Delene had used other than the volume of the woman's voice...though F'ren wouldn't be at all surprised if flattery on Egritte's part had played a significant role. According to G'dil, the pair of them had then been told to review every aspect of the Weyr's logistics, and they'd apparently decided to start from scratch. It was utter madness. But even that might not have become as big a problem as it had, if Delene had found time to keep track of Egritte's decisions. F'ren couldn't understand why she hadn't; Maenida was beginning to recover, as were all the injured dragons, so what was to stop her getting to grips with her new responsibilities? If anything, they ought to have been becoming easier for her to cope with.

Events had finally come to a head by the third sevenday after the Riverbend Fall, beginning with the butter incident. F'ren had actually missed most of the excitement, having been sent out to the nearest farmhold in the middle of a howling gale in order to purchase several marks worth of the stuff. By the time he'd returned, drenched to the skin and with the beginnings of a cold, the kitchen staff had completed their frantic stock-taking and he'd found himself sent straight back out again, that time for eggs. The next deficiency had come to light the following morning, while he'd been helping the weyrlings unload the tithe-train from the weaverhall. With all the recent injuries just about everything non-essential had been turned into bandaging, and the Weyr had been rather desperate to obtain replacements. Unfortunately, there'd been a miscalculation somewhere along the line, with the number of bolts of plain cloth suitable for bed-linen or bandaging getting confused with Egritte's request for satins for Delene. The Weyr's wings had made a pretty sight after the next threadfall, with the injured dragons and riders sporting an embarrassing display of brightly coloured bandaging more in keeping with an Igen gather than a fighting Weyr.

Strangely, there'd been a notable drop in injuries during the Threadfall _after_ that one.... By then, most of the Weyr had reached the same conclusion: even though Maenida was recovering well, the High Reaches needed another weyrwoman, and they needed her _soon_. Who, though? That had been the question on everyone's lips, and a large number of marks had changed hands even before Sh'vek had announced he would be approaching the other Weyrleaders. The four Istan junior queens had all been popular choices, along with Surienth of Benden and the older of Fort's junior queens, Trebbiath. F'ren hadn't given the latter two a second thought; knowing Sh'vek, it was inevitable that one of the Istan queens would make the transfer. And with the Weyr in desperate need of both healers and more young dragons to fill the depleted wings, wagering most of his spare marks on the egg-heavy Helleath and healer-trained Wissa had seemed like a fine idea to F'ren at the time.

Until last night, when Sh'vek had made his announcement.

F'ren had been so shocked by it he'd almost walked out. It wasn't that he'd lost more marks than he could really afford, but that he simply couldn't understand Sh'vek's decision. It just didn't make any sense at all. Alaireth had a clutch on the sands, and wouldn't rise again for the best part of a turn, maybe longer. How did that benefit the High Reaches? True, Rahnis was an experienced weyrwoman, but so were Ista's Serreni and Jassily of Fort. And, unlike either of those two, Rahnis wouldn't be able to give the High Reaches the benefit of her expertise until after her dragon's clutch had hatched at the very earliest. Surely Maenida would be back on her feet by then?

_What if she isn't?_

“What?”

 _Think about it, F'ren_.

If she wasn't...why would Sh'vek lie about Maenida's condition? The bronzerider shook his head, and leaned out to peer over the dragon's shoulder. Far beneath them, a herd of small ovines was racing across a meadow, frightened by the dark shadow cast by the dragon overhead. The herder raised an arm and waved, and F'ren directed Trath higher into the air. _Let's not scare them too much_ , he suggested. _They get a lot of migrating wherries round these parts. We should keep our eyes open for wherever they're roosting_.

Trath rumbled his agreement, and continued down the valley towards Ogren. Now that they were covering inhabited lands again, neither dragon nor rider had time to spare for idle musings. There were signs of an old Thread-burrow in one of the adjacent blind valleys, now several months or more dead, but a little too close to Ogren's fields for comfort. A rock-fall had obscured one of the minor roads leading eastwards, but there were Holdfolk hard at work clearing it already. Trath circled a few times until the Holders spotted them, but no-one signalled for assistance, and so they flew on, past the Hold itself, over more fields and cotholds, and finally out above the empty tundra again.

 _You won't need long to write your report_ , Trath said as the last cothold slid out of sight. _Not even any wherries!_

A note of hunger had entered the dragon's mind, and F'ren couldn't help laughing. _You only fed the other day! Tell you what, let's keep looking. There must be more wherries around here somewhere._ He guided the dragon's attention northwards, towards the distant mountains. Clouds were pouring down their flanks to the east, bringing the expected heavy rains; they'd have no luck hunting wherries in those conditions. _North and west, following the river. And if there aren't any there, you can have the fattest beast you want from the Weyr's herd tomorrow._

As they flew, F'ren's mind kept returning to his dragon's earlier, rather cryptic, comment. What if Maenida _didn't_ recover?

The whole Weyr knew that they'd nearly lost their Weyrwoman during the first night after the Riverbend Fall, and in the sevenday or so afterwards Kiath had had a few more worrying moments of panic, though thankfully not during Threadfall again. But then Sh'vek had announced that she was expected to make a full recovery, the visiting Masterhealer had left, and Kiath had certainly not had any more complaints. Trath had inquired after the Weyrwoman's health a few times since then, and Kiath's answers had all been calm, and consistently similar in their content. Maenida was fine, Maenida was resting, and no, Kiath wasn't worried in the slightest.

But what if Kiath was wrong? What if Maenida _wasn't_ recovering; what if the Weyrwoman were to just stay in her current condition for the foreseeable future? What if her condition actually _worsened_?The Weyr was in enough turmoil as it was. F'ren could feel Trath listening in on his thoughts, and eventually the dragon spoke.

_Relgath of Telgar is to retire at Turnover, I'm told._

What did old Prua and Relgath have to do with...ah. The connection slid into place, and F'ren found himself impressed by his dragon's rather abstract logic. Relgath was old, hadn't risen to mate in almost two turns. And Telgar had two junior weyrwomen, the more competent of whom was Biarta. But if Relgath retired too early....

 _Issy and Frith would become senior,_ Trath finished. _Maybe the Weyrwoman will recover, and maybe she won't. But if she isn't going to recover...._

Chilled by the direction his dragon's thoughts were taking, F'ren grimaced. “If word of that got out, he'd be under enormous pressure to retire her right away.”

_Yes._

_You think Sh'vek's...waiting?_

_Yes._

He was still half-convinced that the whole idea was ridiculous, but F'ren decided to think the implications through all the same. C'nir's bronze had flown Linnebith most recently; if Maenida and Kiath retired, would Sh'vek's second demand to be made acting Weyrleader, or would he wait until Linnebith next rose to mate? F'ren doubted that Sh'vek would want to gamble on that! But if he waited, chose the right moment to announce Maenida's retirement.... Oh, it was all starting to make sense now. Keep the Weyr in the dark, especially the other bronzeriders, right up until the moment Linnebith next rose to mate.

And if Delene _was_ to become Weyrwoman...well, Sh'vek was taking a risk there too, that was for sure. Delene was very fond of G'dil, but Linnebith obviously favoured C'nir's Telemath. For as far back as F'ren could remember, if G'dil's Heggith hadn't mated with Linnebith, Telemath had. Both men were loyal to Sh'vek, true, but with that kind of an advantage and the Weyrleadership up for grabs, would either man really stand aside in Sh'vek's favour? Was that why Delene had been acting so strangely around G'dil recently? Had Sh'vek begun cultivating her interest already? F'ren himself had never paid much attention to either Delene or her dragon, concentrating Trath's efforts on Kiath – she might be beautiful, but Delene had been a dead-end as far as he'd been concerned, a life-time junior. But now...for Linnebith, Trath would have three clear rivals, not just the Weyrleader alone. If the odds were bad for Sh'vek, they were even worse for him and Trath. And would Delene as Weyrwoman _really_ be good for the Weyr, no matter who was Weyrleader?

 _She can hear all of us when she chooses to_ , Trath reminded him.

 _True._ And it wouldn't really matter to Sh'vek that the woman was useless in every other way, not if Ormaith could catch Linnebith, and if the new junior was capable of managing all the hard work of running the Weyr in Delene's stead...which Rahnis would be, of course.

 _You think we should encourage the Weyrleader to favour Alaireth as the next senior queen?_ the bronze asked, almost as if the task would be easy.

Automatically, F'ren smiled. “Why not?” It shouldn't be too hard to highlight to Sh'vek the risks of the love triangle existing between Delene, G'dil and C'nir, especially now that F'ren was flying as a wingsecond with G'dil. Encouraging G'dil's jealous nature wouldn't be a problem, not with Delene acting the way she was already, and a well-chosen comment or two within earshot of certain riders in Flamestrike and Cloudburst Wings would soon work its way back to Sh'vek and C'nir. Delene's appalling lack of competence would help as well. Even as little more than a figurehead, she'd already proved herself capable of far too much damage to the Weyr, and if Rahnis was even half as able as he remembered, Sh'vek couldn't fail to see her as a valid alternative.

F'ren let his grin broaden, remembering the first time he'd met the Istan weyrwoman, the day he'd lost his leadership of Cloudburst Wing. He'd been hard pressed to keep up with her on the ground, before her queen rose, but he and Trath had more than mastered her pace and evasiveness when it really mattered. What a day that had been! Yes, Rahnis would make a good Weyrwoman, he was sure of it, and Trath would have a far better chance with Alaireth than he would for Linnebith.

_I would like to mate with Alaireth again._

The bronzerider closed his eyes, enjoying his dragon's enthusiasm for the idea. Errands could wait; he'd _make_ some time for himself tonight! And, Faranth be praised, had he actually found a dragon who could distract Trath from Ruarnoth?

Trath rumbled a laugh. _Can't I have_ both _of them_? the dragon said as he carefully altered the image of the Istan woman in F'ren's mind. The dark eyes lightened to bright blue, while the remembered curves of breast and hip warped into the decidedly less appealing hard slabs of H'koll's muscles.

Caught quite off-guard, F'ren almost choked. The bronze was teasing him, he realised. _Shard_ _it dragon, you almost had me worried there. It won't be easy though, you know that?_

 _Not for you. All_ I _need do is catch her!_ The dragon twisted his head sideways to look back at his rider, his mind brimming with confidence. _I've already outflown all the Istan bronzes once_.

Shaking his head, F'ren tried to stop his dragon getting overly carried away with the idea. It wouldn't do to underestimate the competition. _Her weyrmate's transferring here too. You think Narnoth hasn't figured out any of your tricks yet? And there's a_ _lways Ormaith...._

_Ha. They'll be too busy worrying about each other._

His dragon had a good point there. F'ren thought back to the last conversation he'd had with M'ton, and what the man had said. Rahnis and M'ton were obviously strongly attached to one another, and he wasn't sure if she'd have the guts to try to talk him _out_ of taking the transfer. She'd been quick enough to grasp the nuances of F'ren's own awkward position in the Weyr three turns back; surely she'd have figured out that her lovestruck weyrmate would find himself managing a _most_ interesting Wing? No, from what he remembered, the woman was probably a little too starry-eyed to be brutal enough to succeed. M'ton would transfer, and Sh'vek would do the hard work of ensuring he wasn't a factor.

Well, _part_ of the hard work...there was still the small matter of trying to manipulate practically half the Weyr without anyone being the wiser.

F'ren cursed aloud at the enormity of it all. This wasn't about proving himself any more – though it had started out that way at first – or about making up for every slight or insult the Weyrleader had sent his way. Mutual loathing wasn't _enough_ of a reason to keep driving himself towards his goal, and it hadn't been for turns. Sh'vek was certainly no fool; he was an able enough leader most of the time, and had earned and held the loyalty of the vast majority of his Wingleaders. But he was far too reluctant to delegate power, and far too adept at shifting the blame for his mistakes elsewhere – usually in F'ren's direction. Sh'vek didn't seem willing to admit to his mistakes even to himself, let alone learn from them. The Weyr was paying for that, paying for it in blood. No. Quite simply, the High Reaches deserved better, it needed a _change_. And after the debacle of the fateful Riverbend Fall, F'ren was more determined than ever to provide it.

It had just seemed so much easier when all that was needed was for Trath to fly Kiath. _Do you think we can do it_? he asked his dragon.

_We can. We will!_

Sighing, F'ren shifted his seat on Trath's neck, and checked their progress across the tundra. The dark band snaking across the whiteness was the river itself, still flowing strongly despite only filling a fraction of its usual channel. He squinted northwards at the southern slopes of the mountains, hoping to see some sign of wherries. Every now and then a glint of reflected sunlight would catch his eye; those were from the frozen cascades that would flood the river in the springtime. Springtime, yes, that was how much time he had to work with. Alaireth would be on the sands for at least another sevenday and wouldn't rise again until early summer, but Linnebith would mate again in the spring. He'd have until then to manipulate Sh'vek, and a few months more to forge the right kind of relationship with Rahnis. It wouldn't do to get too close to the woman, but with the right approach, perhaps he could build up a cautious friendship? It helped that many of his wingmates thought he blamed her for his loss of rank, and would expect him to act somewhat coldly towards her...but Rahnis herself would know better. Ah, but maybe then he could make her a _gift_ of his attitude, distancing himself from her in public whenever he could. That way, he wouldn't be a threat to her relationship with M'ton, he wouldn't blight her standing with the Weyrleader, and she'd be doubly grateful to him.

Trath banked his wings to make the most of an updraught, and expressed his bemusement at his rider's speculative mental efforts with a snort. _I thought you were just going to give her a nice, warm coat? You were definitely thinking of asking Ruarnoth's rider about it_.

 _Was I_?

The dragon gave the equivalent of a mental nod. _Why not just explain everything to her? She would understand, wouldn't she_?

F'ren shook his head, and continued scanning the distant hillsides. _With Narnoth here, too? And us scheming like this? Oh, she'd understand all too well, and then where would we be? No, we're alone on this one, Trath._

_Look!_

The bronzerider swung his attention from north to south, following his dragon's gaze towards one of the minor river valleys that branched away from the main watercourse. It was narrow with little grazing, but the rocky outcrops eroded by the river aeons earlier would have provided perfect shelter for the hardier breeds of herdbeast. In the distance, a scree scar crossed the eastern slope of the valley, and circling high above it were the dark specks of the elusive wherries.

 _I see them, Trath. Looks like a good sized flock._ The bronzerider built a mental map of the terrain they'd already covered, and realised that the valley they were flying into was not actually all that far from the grazing around Ogren Hold, easily within reach of a hungry wherry but too far by foot for the holders to root the pests out.

_Look at the hill, too. No, not there, further down._

F'ren followed his dragon's instructions, and finally picked out the dark shape of the large opening in the hillside that Trath had spotted. Beside it were several smaller openings, and beside one of those was a swinging, rust-red Thread-shutter. “It's a Hold!” Abandoned for centuries, by the looks of it, which might explain why he'd never heard of the place. F'ren shook his head in amazement. “Let's take a closer look.”

_A wherry first, then I'll land._

Still a good distance from the flock, Trath held himself stationary in the air and turned his keen eyesight on the birds and their surrounding landscape. There was no point in picking out an individual bird; by the time they'd gone _between_ and re-appeared above the flock, there'd be no way to tell which had been where. Holding the desired image in his mind, F'ren gave Trath the go-ahead to fly _between_. The dragon folded his wings and dropped through the air, entering _between_ at speed. He re-emerged falling just as fast, high enough above the wherries to angle his descent accurately, but not far enough for the birds to take warning and scatter. Impact alone was enough to stun his chosen prey, and the bronze quickly despatched the bird with a quick bite to the back of its neck before spreading his wings again and gliding to land in front of the abandoned cothold.

F'ren unclipped his straps, slid down from Trath's neck, and left the dragon to his meal. His feet slipped awkwardly on the icy scree slope as he landed, but he held his balance, and cautiously walked towards the largest gaping opening in the cliff-face. Pale lichens clung to the rock wall, while grasses and twisted shrubs made the best they could out of the weak soil in the cracks. As he got closer, F'ren realised that parts of the cliff appeared more weathered than others; he looked down at the tumbled stones beneath his feet, then further away down the slope. Yes, they were all of a type.

“Lakes boil, mountains move,” he muttered to himself. There would have been a path up this slope once, but it had probably been lost in the rock slide. He stared into the gaping opening, probably once part of the main living space of the hold until the outer face of the cliff had sheared away, and wondered if disaster had struck the hold before or after its abandonment. Before, most likely. How many people would have suddenly found themselves holdless? A sweeprider would have spotted what had happened eventually – probably within a sevenday or two, assuming that the place had once been part of the Weyr's regular sweeps of the Crom borders – but the holders would have had to tend their injured and manage as well as they could until then. Firelizards were rare this far north, and only the larger habitations bothered with drums.

F'ren scrambled over some small boulders and entered the main cavern. The opening was big enough for a dragon to climb through, and the main room would be far too draughty for humans. He wished he had some glows to hand to explore it properly. A flight of stairs led off from the main cavern; F'ren could make out half a dozen risers before they became lost in the darkness. Above his head, close to where the hillside had crumbled, he could make out what looked to be the sheared-off floor of an upper-level room. The women and children would have slept at the back of the room, he reminded himself. To his left, the cavern was a mass of tumbled stone. There'd been thread shutters on that side of the hill too, but without a whole team of men to dig a safe way through, there was no way of getting to the rooms behind them now.

Crossing to the other side of the main space, he splashed across a patch of flowing water. Surely it was too cold for that? The bronzerider pulled off a glove, and crouched down to test the water with a fingertip. Warm, but thankfully not anywhere close to boiling, though it might be far hotter further into the old hold's cave system. A natural spring would explain why they'd bothered with such an isolated spot. F'ren cupped his hand and scooped out a mouthful to taste. There was a faint hint of bad eggs to it, barely noticeable at all. Well, easy enough to boil it or fetch it from somewhere else if you were bothered by the taste.

He tracked the stream back along the cavern wall towards a passage that he hadn't noticed at first. At the far end, it opened out into another smaller room with a wet flagstone floor, dimly lit by a chink of light coming through a heavily recessed window. The thread shutters were all latched and rusted, which surely meant that the place hadn't been lived in since the previous Pass. F'ren managed to force one of them open, but it immediately broke off at the hinge and fell to the ground outside.

Light streamed through the opening, illuminating a small cast-iron stove and a recessed washing-trough at waist height, and walls coloured by flaking lime-wash and mould. The smaller cavern had obviously been used as a kitchen-cum-laundry, but the drainage for the spring water was well and truly blocked. A single greened copper pot and a handful of utensils lay scattered on the floor beside the stove; F'ren found two rusted hooks set into the wall above them, but the string that had once been tied between them had rotted away long since. He crouched down, and started sorting through the abandoned goods. The larger pots he'd have expected to find in a hold of this size were missing, as were all of the more essential kitchen implements; at least some of the holders must have survived the rockfall long enough to take them away with them.

F'ren turned to look back towards the passageway and spotted some faint charcoal marks on the wall. A message? No: those were probably the records of the cothold's children, tracing their growth from birth to adulthood. They and their families would have had a hard time of it, made holdless while thread was falling. If the holders were lucky, they'd all have been taken on dragonback to the Weyr; Weyrs always needed extra hands during a Pass. If not, they would probably have been forced to make the three-day trek over the tundra to Ogren unaided, burdened by the essentials of family, food and fuel, leaving everything they could spare behind them: their lives, their dreams, and everything else they'd worked for. Some of life's set-backs you could never prepare for, and never surmount. The entire broken hold made depressing parallels with the Weyrwoman's condition: stricken lightning-fast...and doomed to slow deterioration unless whatever ailed her was mended.

F'ren returned to the main cavern and stared back out into the valley, at the dragonlengths of crumbled stone, wondering why the place hadn't been better maintained, even if it was no longer fit for anything other than a herder's shelter. Perhaps it was just too far away from Ogren? No, the lack of a decent path must have been the biggest problem.

 _F'ren_?

He looked over to his dragon, who was now fastidiously licking the gore from his jaws. _Time to go?_

_Yes. Heggith is asking where we are._

F'ren hurriedly negotiated his way over the strewn boulders back to the bronze's side and mounted up again. The valley was deep in shadow; he and Trath ought to have been back at the Weyr long ago, but there was nothing he could do about that now. As soon as F'ren was strapped in place, Trath sprang into the air and started climbing to a high enough altitude to go _between_ safely. F'ren took one last look back at the melancholy ruin of the broken hold before closing his eyes and fixing the image of the Weyr's spindles in his mind. _Take us home, Trath._


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two extra tags have been added for this chapter (mating flight, consent issues), but it won't be the last time they'll be relevant.

 

_They risk their lives to save us_  
 _From Threadfall's deadly threat_  
 _The dragons and their riders_  
 _We owe them our respect_  
 _But tell me, can you name them_  
 _The weyrfolk, brave and bold_  
 _Weyrleaders and wingleaders_  
 _Their mounts of bronze and gold_  
 _Stand up and form a circle_  
 _Clap hands or stamp your feet_  
 _Then, each in turn, we all will learn_  
 _And name them to the beat_

 

**Early morning, 26.11.34**

**Ista Weyr**

 

Taking the steps two at a time, Rahnis raced down from her weyr, her riding straps looped over one shoulder and a heavy wherhide jacket draped over the opposite arm. Still fuming at being dictated to by Vallenka, she tried to calm her mind; anger at another weyrwoman was _not_ a good idea at a time like this. She paused at the bottom of the steps to take a deep breath and reached out towards her queen. _Hush, dear, don't fret. The eggs will be fine - they won't even know that we're gone._

 _We shouldn't_ be _going. Not today._

It seemed that Alaireth was feeling in much the same mood. The queen dragon was waiting for her right in the middle of the entrance to the Hatching Grounds, her attention torn between the clutch of eggs nestled securely in the sand behind her, and a similar number of bronze dragons clustered on the Weyr's rim up near the star stones, eagerly waiting for Carth to rouse.

Today, the senior queen would rise to mate.

It happened this way sometimes, that one queen would rise while another still had eggs on the sands. With Ista's five queens, a day like this had been overdue, and would happen more often in the Weyr's future once Alaireth's own two daughters matured fully. Tied to her clutch by maternal bonds almost as strong as those between dragon and rider, the brooding queen would either have to sit out the flight with as much dignity as she could muster, or make the difficult decision to leave the eggs behind for a few hours. Rahnis had only gone through it once before, and she wasn't in a hurry to repeat the experience. As heavily suppressed as Alaireth's emotions had been by her greater concern for her eggs, it hadn't been a comfortable feeling, having part of her mind filled by her dragon's almost violently jealous response to another queen's mating lust. That was hard enough to deal with together at the best of times, and the added burden of broodiness made things even worse.

Reaching Alaireth, Rahnis dropped her jacket and lifted her arms. The dragon dipped her great head to nuzzle affectionately at her shoulder. Mutual concern washed through her, easing at least part of the tension spearing through her mind.

“There, see?” she said. “I'm only ever a thought away, love.” _And we'll stay if you need us to,_ she added, letting the truth of the words echo through the bond between them. Vallenka's orders were _nothing_ , not when they conflicted with her dragon's greater need.

 _No._ The dragon emitted a deep exhaled sigh, an almost human expression of resignation, and turned back to her eggs. _No, we must go, as the Weyrwoman told you we must. I would prefer to stay with my eggs, but they are old enough now that they do not need so much tending. The hatchlings-to-be do not yet hunger hard, and they will not miss me for a little while. We will have to leave them and Ista when they hatch in any case. Let me finish turning them, and then we shall go, and learn of our new Weyr. I will not feel her that far away from here._

Letting her hand trail back along the gold's body, Rahnis walked with Alaireth back into the depths of the hatching cavern. If she'd had her way, she'd have made her visit to the High Reaches on her own several days ago already. Simply dropping in to their Lower Caverns for a few hours should have been more than sufficient, and would have been easy enough to arrange besides. But Vallenka had insisted, in a tone which brooked no dissent, that there was a right and proper way that these things were done, that Weyrleader Sh'vek would want to make _proper_ use of her presence, and that she, Vallenka, would see to the arrangements for a full day's excursion herself.

“It didn't have to be today, though.”

_But today is today, and no other._

“True. I think.” Rahnis smiled wryly. Sometimes, Alaireth's remarks could be unbelievably cryptic, but there was always a very draconic sense of rightness about them.

 _I hope I like it there_ , Alaireth mused, stepping neatly between the widely-scattered eggs until she found the one that she'd been looking for.

“Of course you'll like it. No Carth to order us around, you'll fly and clutch however you please, and Narnoth and M'ton will be there with us too.”

The gold dragon dipped her head to test the egg with her tongue, dug at the sand beside it, then rolled it gently over. _There. This one always needs more turning than the rest. The little one within is too large for his shell._ She lifted her head, and peered across the Sands at her clutch, surveying it one final time. _Now we can go. They will join us there, today, Narnoth and M'ton?_

 _M'ton's still in that meeting with N'essen, but Vallenka said she'd see to it that I wasn't late_.

Alaireth's eyes whirled in the spiralling mixture of blue and green Rahnis had long ago learned to recognise as amusement. _And she is another reason that you and M'ton_ must _go today!_

“I know.”

 _Besides_ , the queen continued, still peering closely at the egg before her, _it won't be very long now. No more than three or four more dawns._

It was good that the queen was beginning to accept the imminence of the hatching. For the past sevenday, she'd spent nearly every waking minute looming jealously over the eggs, and barely permitted anyone other than Rahnis to even set foot on the hatching sands. Ever since Vallenka had given them their transfer orders, in fact. Sensing an invitation, Rahnis crouched down beside the egg and rested a hand against it. The surface was firm and ever-so-slightly striated beneath her fingertips. It was warm, too, and not just from the heat of the sands beneath. Lifting her hand, she closed her eyes and traced a line across the swirled patternings of the shell with the back of a fingernail, trying to get a feel for how brittle the egg was. Really, it felt as close to hatching as any egg she'd touched ever got. “They change so fast...are you sure it'll be so long?”

_They are content. Even this one does not hunger very much, and does not yet know the need he will hatch with. That will change, but not so fast. I know that now._

“I wonder what it will hatch?” Rahnis said quietly, straightening again. “What sort of rider this one will Impress, what sort of a life they'll have together here at Ista. We likely won't see them again until they're grown, if then.” Truth be told, neither she nor Alaireth had had much to do with the raising of the young dragons Alaireth had clutched over the turns, but the prospect of leaving the Weyr had left her feeling uneasy, unsettled.

_They will find their answers in each other, as do we. Do not be afraid, my heart._

Feeling the comforting presence of the gold's mind wrapped around her own, Rahnis realised that the dragon was right about her apprehension. “I am, aren't I? Worrying over our own future. It's just today, I feel so, so....”

 _I feel it too, and I do not understand it either. Perhaps it is just Carth. I think I shall try to sleep, later._ The gold dragon's head suddenly whipped around to stare back towards the Weyrbowl.

 _What is it?_ Rahnis asked. _Is it M'ton? Narnoth?_

_Carth!_

“Carth? Already?” Rahnis echoed.

_She wakes. She won't wait much longer._

Sear and scorch the woman! Vallenka would see they weren't late, would she? When Carth was on the verge of rising, and, most infuriatingly of all, M'ton was still stuck in the council chamber with Weyrleader N'essen and the other Wingleaders. Faranth knew, N'essen could have easily postponed the meeting; Trioth hadn't had to face a serious challenge for Carth in turns. Rahnis gave a low laugh. Well, Carth rising now _would_ ensure that she and and Alaireth weren't late for their visit in the north, if nothing else. At this hour in the northwest, they'd probably still be breakfasting. But there wasn't anything else she could do now other than leave. Storming into the council chambers to haul M'ton out might have been an option if she'd thought to act on it sooner, but instead, she'd trusted the Weyrwoman. And asking Alaireth to make a demand on her behalf by touching the mind of either the senior queen or N'essen's increasingly randy bronze was quite unthinkable. Rahnis stood on her tiptoes to reach up to her dragon's head, and gently stroked her. _She won't take your eggs, and you've always had your pick of the bronzes. But we have to go._

_I know._

The whirling of the gold's eyes steadied a little. She took a few steps clear of her clutch and lowered her body to the ground, allowing Rahnis to sling the first of the heavy straps over her neck. It was stiff with tension. Rahnis took a deep breath, and tried to steady her own nerves. This was no time to fumble with buckles! That was one good thing about the High Reaches, she supposed. Fewer queens – and without the bright sun and heat of Ista, a lot more warning when they were about to rise.

With all the buckles in place, Rahnis slapped her dragon lightly on the neck, and the dragon held out a foreleg to help her to mount. As she settled into place, Alaireth twisted her head back to look at her eggs one last time.

_But we're leaving them._

_Our eggs aren't going anywhere, and Narnoth will be following us soon._ If he could get away in time. If. Rahnis blinked at the bright morning sunlight as they left the Hatching Cavern, and did her best to scan the Weyr rim, trying to pick Narnoth out from the gathered dragons. She finally spotted him amongst a cluster of other bronzes high up near the Starstones. Was M'ton _still_ in the council chambers with the other wingleaders? He had to be, because none of the handful of bronzes currently blooding held any rank. It wouldn't be long now though.

“Dammit, N'essen, what could _possibly_ be so important right now?” Rahnis looked back down the length of Alaireth's tail towards the stairs that ran up from the bowl to the Weyrleaders' quarters, hoping to see some sign of movement, anyone, even if it wasn't M'ton.

Perhaps she could wait another minute, at least until...oh.

A series of shadows passed across the ground, racing towards the milling herd of livestock in the distance. Too late; they had to leave. Biting her lower lip, she mentally hauled Alaireth's attention back from the eager bronzes and told her it was time to go.

Obedient to her rider's wishes, Alaireth pulled in a deep lungful of air, and sprang enthusiastically into the air. The gold quickly gained altitude, while Rahnis visualised the seven snow-covered peaks of High Reaches Weyr in her mind, beneath a clear blue sky. She hadn't been there in so long...but there'd been no major changes, and there was neither the time nor the need to check with the watch dragon for a more precise visual, beyond the weather report Vallenka had already given her.

 _I know where we're going_ , Alaireth confirmed as she carried them _between_.

This close to Turn's End, the northern Weyr was just as freezing as she'd expected, and the open air felt scarcely any warmer than the chill of _between_ on Rahnis' arms, even covered by her heaviest shirt – especially as she'd left her jacket on the ground next to the Hatching Cavern in her haste to depart.

 _Idiot, idiot woman!_ she cursed herself. Well, there was no going back now, and it wouldn't be fair on Alaireth to so much as think about it. Sighing softly, she felt for her dragon's mind, to see how she was doing and to ask if she'd bespoken the High Reaches' watch dragon yet. Slowly but surely, Alaireth's tension and frustration was trickling away. It had been too long since they'd flown together, but even a short flight like this would help to lift the queen's spirits. _They know we're here?_

Spilling the air from her wings Alaireth banked effortlessly into a spiral, and the peaks of the Weyr's spindles hoved into view. Snow covered the Starstones, and a bronze dragon stood on the ledge beside them, idly scratching at his flank with one of his hind legs while his rider scooped out handfuls of grit from a sack a little way down the path. As Alaireth's glide brought them closer, the bronzerider raised his head, and Rahnis recognised him.

F'ren.

 _Trath welcomes us to the Weyr. His rider says he might have known. I'm not sure I understand_.

Rahnis wasn't entirely certain she understood either. She hadn't known she'd be coming to the High Reaches today specifically until the Weyrwoman had broken the news to her at their morning briefing. They'd have had even _less_ warning up here, and if anyone other than Sh'vek had been forewarned of her arrival she'd have expected the morning's watch-pair to have been amongst them. But if they _hadn't_ been told, why was F'ren acting like he _should_ have guessed – guessed something he couldn't possibly have known anyway? And why was she confusing herself, tying her mind in knots over something like this? _I don't know, and I'm not feeling hugely curious right now either. He's perhaps not the best...._

_Oh. Politics?_

_Politics._ A dull ache in Rahnis's neck abruptly made her realise that she'd been twisting her head up and almost backwards to keep the man in view. She rubbed at the muscles, wincing as the air rushing past her dragon found the opening of her sleeve, sending freezing air the length of her arm.

 _Ormaith sends a greeting, and welcomes us too_ , Alaireth told her as they closed with the ground. Minute adjustments to the trim of her wings brought them down on a patch of ground remarkably free of either snow or the sheen of ice, not too far from the entrance to the Lower Caverns.

_Thank you, dear. Did he say where we were to go?_

That had been one instruction Vallenka hadn't passed on in advance. Rahnis slid down from Alaireth's neck, and looked around the bowl. The large bronze on the senior queen's ledge was easily identifiable as Ormaith. Weyrlings were drilling further down the bowl, a gang of young lads from the Lower Caverns were breaking up and grading firestone ready for bagging, and the usual cluster of dragons were bathing by the lake. Dragons occupied nearly every ledge on the north side of the bowl; the Weyr was making the best of the day's scant hours of sunshine.

“Weyrwoman Rahnis?”

The man who'd spoken had approached from Alaireth's far side, and it was another few seconds before he walked into view. He had fair, curly hair and was young enough that he couldn't have been long out of weyrlinghood, but he wore the knots of a full dragonrider, and a bronzerider at that. His manner was confident enough, still a good few turns away from becoming the stereotypical swagger of his peers, but his honest features were genuinely welcome; almost as much as the heavy coat that he was holding out towards her.

“Yes, that's me. Is that...?”

“For you? Yeah, Wingsecond F'ren said you needed one.”

“Did he?” A gust of wind lifted the hem of her shirt, and Rahnis decided that, whatever its provenance, she needed that coat. “Would you ask Trath to thank him for me please, Alaireth,” she said, and quickly pulled the garment on. It was only a little on the large side for her – it might have been a good fit if she'd been wearing a bulky knit like most High Reachers favoured – and lined with thick, soft fleece. “And thanks to you, too...?”

“O'reb. Mannifeth's rider.”

“O'reb. Thank you. Would you happen to know where I'm meant to go? Weyrleader Sh'vek's expecting me, but didn't specify _where_.”

The young man shrugged and smiled apologetically. “Didn't he?” He looked back over his shoulder up at the Starstones, then back at her face. “Council chamber, probably. I could escort you there, if you'd like?”

Now, was he just being helpful, or helping someone else? Rahnis shook her head. “No, I shouldn't keep you from your duties, bronzerider.”

O'reb gave her a sharp salute. “'S'always nice to meet someone new. Good luck!”

Rahnis nodded, turned back to Alaireth, and began loosening her straps. _Good luck?_ What was she getting herself into here?

_Politics._

_Alaireth?_

_I've asked Ormaith. He says you are to go up to the council room. Sh'vek will meet you there soon. And Trath tells me the coat is yours, and that F'ren apologises about it not being finished yet._

_He had it_ made?

_Apparently._

Rahnis grimaced, wondering what in Faranth's name the man meant by such an extravagant gesture. Well, it was easy enough to set him straight on where he stood. _Ask Trath to tell him that if M'ton's coat fits as well as mine, it will be a very welcome gift indeed._

Alaireth's mind brightened with glee. _Done_.

_What about you? Where will you go while I'm inside?_

_I'm offered the use of one of the queens' ledges, but I think I shall head up to the ridge. I can watch things better from up there, and the sun will be pleasant if I decide to doze._

Yes, that seemed like a good idea. Gossiping with the other dragons on the ridge would keep Alaireth's mind off Narnoth's absence at least, though Rahnis kept that last thought firmly to herself before burying it as well as she could. She needed to do that herself: keep her mind off things. She had more than enough to concern herself with here, after all. In a new Weyr, with unfamiliar people, she'd need to tread carefully until she got to know people better – especially where some people were concerned. Picking her way over the few icy patches on her route, Rahnis approached the stairs up to the Weyrleaders' weyr and the council rooms. At least the steps were well covered with rough salt, giving a firm footing. She wondered what the conditions would be like in another month's time. Colder, no doubt. Even thinking of the depth of the High Reaches winters made her shiver.

Ormaith was watching as she crested the edge of the queen's ledge, his eyes whirling inscrutably. The bronze was in fine shape despite his age, longer in the wing than Narnoth and more heavily muscled. Probably not so agile in the air, Rahnis decided as she walked past and into the inner weyr. Kiath was inside, sound asleep, stretched out to her full length along her couch. Not wanting to wake the queen, Rahnis stepped softly towards the glow-lit corridor to the council chamber.

She'd expected the council chamber to be empty, but as she approached, Rahnis was surprised to hear the sound of several low-voiced conversations emanating from within. The door was closed, and she decided to knock rather than walking straight in. The voices fell silent, except for one of the deepest, which immediately invited her in. Rahnis lifted up the latch on the door, and let it swing open towards her. She took a step back, moving out of the way of the door, then entered the crowded room.

“You must be Rahnis,” said the dark-skinned rider at the far end of the table; Wingleader C'nir, she identified, Sh'vek's second-in-command. By his voice, he was the same man who'd invited her in.

“And you must be C'nir,” she replied, immediately feeling a little foolish for pointing out the obvious. She quickly scanned the other faces and knots in the room. Six Wingleaders in total, and as many Wingseconds. The oldest Wingleader had to be Ev'les and the youngest S'kloss, but the rest of the bronzeriders – and they were, all, bronzeriders – were harder to place. Quite the welcoming committee, really.

“Please, have a seat.” C'nir gestured to a chair to his left, one of the customary spaces reserved for a junior queenrider. “Is Wingleader M'ton not with you?”

“No. He, ah...couldn't be spared.”

“Pah!” White-haired Ev'les rocked back in his chair. “He'd better make up for it soon. I'm not leaving my Wing in the hands of a _complete_ stranger.”

C'nir pursed his lips and gave a slight shake to his head. “Well, I'm sure you'll find us good company in his absence.”

She walked around the table, trying to ignore the watching eyes following her every move. Oh, she'd expected to be introduced to most of these riders later, just not all at once, and certainly not without M'ton by her side. Six months from now.... Well, even a plain woman became attractive when her queen rose to mate. Before then, even. _Damn you, N'essen_ , she thought to herself as C'nir helped her into her chair, the simple touch sending a wash of heat through her body. _And damn you too, Vallenka._ She had a horrid suspicion that she was blushing, though if there was any colour in her cheeks, she could easily blame the cold air outside in the bowl. Still, you couldn't ignore the world just because it displeased you. Rahnis smiled at the mob, graciously, she hoped, and turned back to C'nir.

“I hope I'm not interrupting anything, Wingleader.”

“A new weyrwoman is _never_ an interruption,” someone said from the opposite end of the table. Rahnis didn't see who it was; she was still watching C'nir, who'd frowned rather interestingly at the speaker. With all the ranking bronzeriders gathered together – well, almost all of them – she was pretty sure they were assembled for more reason than herself alone. She looked round, wondering who had spoken, and saw the door open again.

“Everyone here? Good.” The Weyrleader walked briskly into the room, carrying a roll of hides under one arm. He was followed by a man Rahnis recognised as M'arsen, one of Sh'vek's wingseconds. They were both tall men, easily taller than M'ton, but the similarities between them ended there. Where Sh'vek was broad and imposing with a full head of greying brown hair, M'arsen was wiry, with a receding hairline and a thin, expressive face which currently held a look of bored disinterest. Sh'vek, well, she could guess little of his mood from his impassive patrician features – the easy charm he'd shown her in Ista was utterly absent – but she'd have expected nothing less from any relative of Vallenka. No, what was more interesting was the way the whole atmosphere of the room had changed as he walked in. The air of idle amusement that had greeted her own arrival had vanished, replaced by rapt attention. She'd seen Vallenka have that effect on the Lower Caverns workers once or twice, but never Weyrleader N'essen. It was really quite impressive. Sh'vek caught her eye as she looked up at him again, his lips twitching into an almost-smile. She'd thought she was feeling out of her depth before, but now....

Sh'vek dropped the hides onto the table, sat down in the last empty chair on C'nir's right, then reached across to clasp her hand. As unwelcome as the touch was in her overcharged state, pulling away would have been awkward. The Weyrleader's grip was firmly secure, but not hard enough that he'd miss the slight trembling in her fingers, and she forced herself to squeeze back.

“Welcome to the High Reaches. My apologies for not greeting you properly earlier, but we've much work to be done today.”

“No, that's fine, I wouldn't want to impose....”

Sh'vek patted her hand and smiled condescendingly, then leaned back into his chair. “No imposition at all, dear girl. Has C'nir done the introductions yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, as reliable as they are, my bronzeriders are rarely _quite_ this prompt, so I'm sure they're all rather keen to meet you. And M'ton, of course,” he added with barely a pause, “though Ormaith tells me he won't be joining us today. Pity, I had rather a lot to discuss with him.” He stared at her thoughtfully for a few seconds longer, then looked round to his right. “M'arsen and C'nir you already know, I believe.”

“Of course.” Glad of the opportunity to look at someone else, she smiled and nodded at the brown Wingsecond, then at each of the other riders in turn as they were introduced. She tried to fix the names and wings in her head as they went round the table, and then settled for just the names. S'kloss, P'vash, M'gan, Ev'les, D'barn, J'garray, A'zad...she decided to give up on memorising the Wingseconds after A'zad; she'd pick them up soon enough when she moved north. G'dil was one of the other Wingleaders she already knew, having seen him accompanying weyrwoman Delene at the last Ruathan Gather, and on several other occasions before then. The last one, seated to her left, was F'ass. He shook her hand weakly, and seemed to be having difficulty meeting her eyes.

“Well then, weyrwoman Rahnis.”

She turned back to Sh'vek's side of the table. He was picking at the knotted cord that held the roll of hides together, without much success.

“I'd like to leave the explanation of your duties until a little later, if you don't mind,” he continued. “I thought it might be best if you see a little more of the place first, meet a few more people before then. In the meanwhile, your fingers are smaller than mine and no doubt more used to this job. Would you mind?” Without waiting for a reply, he pushed the hides in her direction.

“Not at all.” Rahnis lifted her hands from her lap, and halted the rolling bundle in its tracks. The knot was indeed tight and rather awkward to unpick, but as he'd suggested, it didn't take her long to manage the job, even watched as she was the whole while. Dropping the tie onto the table, she smoothed the hides flat. They were reluctant to unroll on their own, and she guessed they dated from the previous Pass at the very least. Before she could start reading, C'nir pulled them away from her and passed them back to Sh'vek.

“Description of the Tillek Threadfalls from the last two passes,” the Weyrleader said in explanation, and began leafing through the hides. “I'm sure M'ton would have found it useful, but the strategies employed by the upper wings might be a little....”

“Above her?” S'kloss suggested with a wide grin.

Sh'vek shook his head, plainly unamused by the younger man's jest. “I doubt that. Vallenka's rather complimentary about her wits...which is more than I can say for some of the rest of you.” He turned his attention back to Rahnis, and smiled charmingly at her. It was almost enough to make up for the fact that he hadn't let her answer for herself. “Stay if you wish,” he continued. “I'm sure your opinion might be useful. Though I think you'd prefer the grand tour, yes?”

“Well.” Rahnis leaned back in her chair, and tried to gather her thoughts. For some reason, she simply wasn't concentrating at all well today...nor could she decide whether she was being praised or openly mocked – not that Sh'vek knew her well enough to do either one! And was he disappointed by M'ton's absence, or being disparaging of it? _Alaireth, are you all right out there?_

_Perfectly comfortable. Is there a problem?_

She shrugged mentally. So, it wasn't Alaireth's worries but her own. And over what? Warm smiles, kind words, and her own paranoia? Whatever it was, even if it was nothing at all, until she'd made sense of things in her own head she wasn't going to be comfortable. “I'll take the tour, I think, Weyrleader,” she said, in spite of feeling pushed into doing so. Hopefully the headwoman would make better company.

“Excellent,” Sh'vek drawled. “M'arsen will show you around.”

Concealing her disappointment as well as she could, Rahnis pushed her chair back and stood up. The brown Wingsecond did the same, and gestured for her to precede him out of the room. She looked back, briefly, as she left.

They were still watching her. All of them.

She pulled her new coat closer to her body, and tried not to shiver.

 

 

 

 

M'arsen's tour of the Weyr filled the best part of two hours, and was exceedingly thorough. The man's conversation was somewhat stilted, but she soon figured out that he could be readily steered into one stock lecture or another. Rahnis was generally content to listen and observe, filing away the key differences between the High Reaches and Ista as they came up, and prompting the brownrider with further questions whenever his latest spiel had run its course. Truth be told, one Weyr was much like any other, and there were very few surprises for her along the way. The ground level weyrs were all fairly typical, the weyrlings comfortably housed in the usual large, slate-roofed stone hall, and there were a number of weyrfolk engaged in different crafts or chores around the edge of the bowl. The hatching cavern was warm and spacious, the Weyr's livestock was healthy, with the day's culls clearly marked with splashes of yellow paint, and the lake was large, cold, and well supplied with ice-breaking equipment and drainage sluices. The Weyr's laundry was set in a cavern close to the lake, beside several other heated rooms which were apparently reserved for steam-bathing, whatever that was. She'd asked M'arsen about that, but his answer of ' _Bathing, with steam_ ' and a look that clearly questioned her intelligence didn't leave her inclined to press him any further on the subject. Short of interrupting the weyrfolk currently making use of those facilities, she'd have to stay ignorant of the details until she had the chance to ask someone else.

After the lake, they'd crossed the bowl back towards the Lower Caverns, while M'arsen explained which parts of the Weyrbowl were used by wings and weyrlings for drills, where the Weyr assembled before Threadfall, and where the healers set up their supplies ready to treat the injured. Those details were good to know, and the sooner she had them fixed in her mind, the better. They'd be fighting Thread from the High Reaches within the sevenday, and the enormity of what she had yet to learn about this Weyr's responsibilities was a fact that she was far too well aware of. Learning the geography would come with time, and she and Alaireth wouldn't be bearing the brunt of Threadfall on their own – but the Weyr _would_ be relying on them to get the most seriously injured dragonpairs safely home, and treated fast. Rahnis made a mental note to speak to the dragonhealers at the earliest opportunity – assuming M'arsen's tour ever finished.

Unlike at Ista Weyr, there was only one main entrance into the Lower Caverns, but there was also a long stone building running alongside the crater wall. This housed the Weyr's kitchen and dining area and the living quarters for many of the staff, while the cavern-proper held the larger communal living area, storage rooms, the headwoman's offices, the teaching rooms and a number of smaller sleeping areas for families. Just as in Ista, the Lower Caverns were thick with activity. It all seemed rather chaotic, but she supposed that would be true from an outsider's perspective wherever you were. The headwoman would surely shed light on how everything worked, but instead of introducing her to whichever of the women was actually in charge, M'arsen led her back out into the bowl again, and pointed out the queens' weyrs.

“There. Kiath's weyr has the passage that leads on to the hatching ground, and Delene and Linnebith are accommodated on the other side of it. You can have your pick of one of the other three. C'nir and M'gan are making use of the two to the left at present, but if you prefer one of theirs rather than the unoccupied one, that's your prerogative as a queenrider. They won't complain.”

“I'd like to look around them, if possible. Will they mind that?”

M'arsen grunted. “Shouldn't have thought so. Tough luck for them if they do.”

They climbed back up to Kiath's ledge, and then up a second flight of stairs to inspect the empty weyr first of all. A slanted opening divided the dragonweyr from the broad outside ledge, following the softer strata of the rock. The dragonweyr was heated by hypocaust, M'arsen informed her, sparing the need for the braziers used in the upper weyrs – though he assured her she could still have one of those for her own quarters if she found them too cold in winter time. The inner room was spacious, but lacked the shuttered exterior window she had back at Ista; she didn't think that would be a disadvantage so far north. M'gan's weyr was almost identical to the empty one in design, while C'nir's was entered through a short but slightly curved tunnel. Aside from that there was little to choose between them on the inside.

“Well, weyrwoman?”

Was M'arsen expecting her to decide there and then? “Can we go back to the empty one again? I'll call Alaireth down to try it out. No sense asking anyone to move if she's comfortable there, and the ledge and dragonweyr there seemed a little bigger than the others.”

“Ah, for your weyrmate's dragon?”

“Narnoth, yes.”

On second inspection, with Alaireth present as well for scale, Rahnis was pleasantly surprised. This weyr was much bigger than their current accommodations at Ista. Why was it unoccupied though? Plumbing, perhaps? Or all the steps? She pushed herself away from the wall, meaning to inspect the flow of water in the bathing room while Alaireth was still settled comfortably on the heated couch, but before she'd taken more than a couple of steps she sensed that the gold dragon had pulled herself to her feet. Rahnis followed Alaireth out of the weyr and started down the stairs towards where M'arsen was waiting, while the dragon made the short glide past the Weyr's Hatching Cavern to the three other queens' weyrs.

 _Baxuth's weyr is better,_ Alaireth explained. _These aren't the usual winds today, and that other one will be draughty._

_It will?_

_Yes,_ Alaireth confirmed, her mental tone smug. _I've spoken to Baxuth, and he agrees that his is best. Don't worry about making them move out; Baxuth says his rider won't mind at all. He seems to be quite pleased that I like it._

From the darkness of Kiath's weyr, a voice called out. “I'm sure he is.”

Rahnis froze on the spot, and peered back over her shoulder towards Kiath's ledge. Even knowing who it had to be – who else could have overheard her conversation with Alaireth? – didn't make the intrusion any more welcome.

“Baxuth is _such_ a flirt,” Delene continued as she emerged onto the ledge, and hurried down the stairs. “Makes up for M'gan; he thinks so much of himself that he doesn't even try.” She pointedly ignored Rahnis as she passed, but paused to speak briefly with M'arsen at the foot of the stairs. “Weyrleader Sh'vek is with her. _She_ 's expected. Linnebith needs me now, but I may be able to spare some time for her later. Probably not, though. Let Egritte deal with her.” She walked away without a backward glance, even when the brownrider called out her name.

Perturbed by her encounter with the other weyrwoman, Rahnis touched Alaireth's mind, sensing how tightly the dragon was now holding her thoughts. _Are you okay_?

_That was most strange, Rahnis. She heard me, but when I tried to speak to her alone, she closed herself, and became as deaf to me as almost anyone. She is the other weyrwoman?_

_Yes._

_Then I shall introduce myself to Linnebith. Perhaps I shall like her better than her rider._

“I apologise for Delene, weyrwoman Rahnis,” M'arsen said, climbing the steps towards her. “She's under a great deal of pressure right now, and is certainly most obliged to you for transferring to our Weyr.”

It hadn't sounded that way. “I'll take your word for it then. She mentioned the Weyrleader?”

“Mmm. He's ready to speak to you now. I'll take you through.”

Leaving Alaireth to build bridges with the other queen, she let M'arsen lead her back into the Weyrleaders' quarters again. The queen dragon was awake on her couch, and Rahnis greeted her out of polite habit while M'arsen knocked on the inner door.

“Good morning to you, Kiath.”

_My thanks._

The queen's mental voice was rich and warm, easing the surprise of hearing it in the first place. Rahnis quickly smiled back at her, then followed M'arsen in to the inner weyr. The room was well furnished and softly lit by glows. The Weyrwoman lay asleep – or perhaps unconscious – in her bed, and a healer was changing the bandages on her head. It had been a little over a month since the fateful Threadfall, but the Weyrwoman's injury looked more severe than Rahnis had imagined. Half her tightly-curled dark hair had been shaved away, and two lines of stitches tracked across one side of her scalp. The Weyrleader was seated beside her, holding one of her hands. He looked around as she came in.

“Come in, Rahnis. M'arsen, before you go, take her coat, would you? Here, sit down.”

Rahnis slipped off her coat and handed it to M'arsen, and took the offered chair beside Sh'vek. The wooden seat was still warm from where Delene had been sitting in it. “How is she doing?”

“It's not as bad as it looks. The injury has healed well, and Tarkan here and Master Healer Rynder tell me that there's no need for further surgery.”

“And she'll recover fully?”

“So I'm told. She's being weaned off the fellis and the other drugs gradually. Her head pains have eased at last, and she's improving more and more every day.... It'll take time though, and she has a long way to go.”

The bearded healer finished his work, and straightened up. “I should see to my other patients now, Weyrleader.”

“Do that.” He fell silent until the other man had left. “It kills me, seeing her lying here like this, but it won't be forever – and I certainly don't want her pushing herself too hard. Delene does her best, but....” Sh'vek's voice trailed off into a sigh, and he gazed tenderly at the Weyrwoman. “We've been weyrmates since the beginning. Much like you and M'ton, from what I hear.”

The Weyrleader's face was grave, finally showing the full weight of his fifty-odd turns. The confidence she'd seen earlier was gone, and he seemed burdened by his cares. He and Maenida had led the High Reaches together for almost two decades, Rahnis reminded herself, and losing her help and companionship must have come as a heavy blow to him. “How can I help?”

Sh'vek looked away blankly across the room. “How would you sum yourself up, as a weyrwoman?”

“Well. I know how to do my duties, I think. That, or Vallenka has finally given up on me as a lost cause.” Her joke fell flat, and before the silence could grow awkward she filled it with more details. “I'm not much of a dragonhealer, but we fight Thread well, I can manage the basics of servicing my own 'thrower, and we manage as good an ambulance service as any.” She winced as a shadow crossed Sh'vek's face, abruptly remembering that that had been what Maenida had been doing at the time of her collapse, and swiftly continued. “The rest of it is caring for Alaireth, logistics, and liaising with others. Alaireth's in good health, and she clutches well, given the chance. Vallenka had me concentrating on the record-keeping and let Serreni deputise for her more regularly than I ever did, but I know how it works, and I've not offended a Lord Holder yet. I've also learned a lot from the records about how to deal with changing circumstances.”

Sh'vek raised his eyebrows. “Ah, you heard about our last tithe then?”

Rahnis didn't answer, deciding that an answer in the affirmative would probably not be the wisest option.

“And you _do_ know how not to offend. When you choose.” He softened the reprimand with a brief smile. “Maenida was – is – a superb Weyrwoman. Got everything done before I even knew it needed doing, let me get on with the real work of protecting Pern. And Kiath is the beating heart of the Weyr. The other dragons look up to her, as they should, and she in turn... she supports them in their need, and they in hers. We had a difficult time, at the start, but with Ormaith's support and Linnebith and Delene – you know she can hear other dragons?”

“Mmm.”

“Between us, we're there for Kiath when Maenida is too weak, or unconscious. And that's part of why I chose you, specifically.”

“Oh?”

“I think you have just the experience this Weyr needs. Oh, I'm not talking about the training and willingness to run the place effectively as a _junior_ pair, though you fit that well enough – or the fact that Alaireth can throw the large clutches we'll be needing for a good few Turns to come. No. You've demonstrated that you have the strength of mind to _control_ your dragon, when you need to. Not everyone can deny themselves like that.”

A pang of regret surged through her. Carth and Vallenka had never had to hold themselves back. No, it was still too soon to let herself think of Ista. “Weyrwoman Vallenka made it very clear what my options were right from the start. She doesn't approve of weyrmating in junior pairs, nor of 'burdening the Weyr through self-indulgence'.”

“Nor do I, in principle...but we can discuss that another time. What I _need_ to know now is this: how good are you and Alaireth at bolstering the minds of injured dragons? Or soothing those with injured riders?”

The purpose behind his questioning clarified in her mind. She sucked a hastily indrawn breath through her teeth. “Kiath?”

Sh'vek nodded. “Yes. It won't just be Thread injuries you need to worry about. As I said, things _have_ improved greatly, but there's some way to go yet. Delene bears the brunt of it, but her sensitivity is _too_ great at times, and Ormaith and I cannot always be spared. Can you and Alaireth stand firm against a senior queen in distress? Vallenka tells me you're a stubborn young woman.”

Rahnis met his challenging look with one of her own. “We can hold our own against Carth. If we choose.”

Sh'vek laughed. “Good. I doubt you've been tested _quite_ that far in the past, but Vallenka assured me that you'd suit our needs. And it's important to me – and the Weyr – that you're as confident in your abilities as they merit. So. Your duties in this Weyr. Kiath remains here during Threadfall, and Delene and Linnebith stay with them, except when they're needed for rescues. You and Alaireth will fight Thread as usual, but you will also supervise the post-fall sweeps and eradication of burrows.”

“Fair enough.”

“I appreciate that it will take some time for you to learn our local geography properly. How would you like to proceed there?”

That question at least had an obvious answer. “Could your Weyrlingmaster drill on recognition points with me?”

“I'll see that he does. Better than that, you'll drill with Ormaith and me as well.”

It surprised Rahnis that the Weyrleader could spare the time for such a basic task. “Thank you.”

“Don't thank me yet,” he warned. “You won't find me an easy taskmaster. What else?”

“I'll want to take Alaireth out flying straight as often as possible. If nothing else, we need to rebuild our stamina after spending the last few months on the Sands and, as you say, we don't know the geography yet. I'd also like us to join the dragons that fly your pre-fall sweeps. It'd help a lot, to have it fresh in our minds – where the tricky thermals are, which zones have groundcrews in place, where a burrow can be easily missed.”

Sh'vek nodded thoughtfully, stroking his chin. “You'd also have the chance to get to know our Weyr's riders better, too. How...efficient.”

If he thought she had any motive other than efficiency, Rahnis wasn't willing to let him linger on the idea. “Yes, that too. Would you be able to supply me with Wing lists? And for the Lower Caverns staff as well?” The latter were arguably more important for her daily duties anyway.

“The first, yes. I'll send them to Ista with a Weyrling tomorrow. Ask Egritte for the second.”

Egritte, the new headwoman...whom Rahnis had yet to meet. Gossip and Vallenka between them had given her a very poor impression of the woman, but was Sh'vek really the type of Weyrleader who would tolerate an incompetent in that role, even if Lower Caverns appointments were outside his traditional remit? He'd already as much as implied that the bulk of the organisational work would fall onto her own shoulders; what role would Egritte play in that context? “Egritte, yes. I'm looking forward to meeting her.”

“Of course you are. I'll be sending you down to her offices next. But before you go, you need to understand a few things first.” The Weyrleader leaned back in his chair, and looked at her steadily, almost as if he was making sure she was sufficiently attentive.

“Go on.”

“Delene. She and Linnebith are the acting senior pair until Maenida is back on her feet again.”

Rahnis nodded, leaving the thought of what might happen if Maenida's condition worsened safely unspoken. If it happened, it would happen soon, and Linnebith would inevitably be the next queen to rise under those circumstances.

Satisfied with her silent assent, the Weyrleader continued. “Delene will continue to act as the public face of the Weyr, and liaise with the Holds and Crafthalls. If there are any particulars that you desire, you'll pay for them in marks. We give a generous allowance to our weyrwomen and Wingleaders. Visit as you will, but steer clear of politicking for now. Delene will also maintain responsibility for Lower Caverns appointments. You will support her in that, visibly and fully. Advise her – and Headwoman Egritte – as you feel you must, but I'll warn you now, their decisions, not yours, _are_ final. I doubt your opinion of Egritte will prove to be much better than my own, but even that shouldn't be an obstacle to the three of you getting this Weyr running smoothly again.”

Sh'vek had phrased his restrictions reasonably enough, but Rahnis couldn't see how they could work in her own interests in any way at all, and wasn't convinced that they were any better for the Weyr at large. She had been about to ask whether a few staffing changes might not solve half the Weyr's problems there and then, but he caught the doubtful look in her eyes, and gave a short, bitter laugh.

“You work your way well enough around my sister, or so I'm reliably informed. I do _not_ want to hear of any dissension. This Weyr has borne far too much instability over the last few sevendays, and I _will_ not see it continue. I expect nothing less than perfection, Rahnis.” He looked down at the weyrwoman, lying deathly still on the bed. “I owe it to Maenida.”

As much as he reminded her of Vallenka, and in spite of what she'd heard of him in the past from F'ren, the love and concern he bore for his weyrmate – and their joint home – were obvious. And he _knew_ this Weyr, where she herself did not. Was that enough reason to trust him in this?

“Will you do that?” Sh'vek asked. “For all of us?”

The look he gave her was intent, demanding. He was offering her the biggest challenge of her life but, for whatever reason, he seemed absolutely certain of her ability to meet it.

“I will.”

 

 

 

 

Closing the door of the Headwoman's office – if that could _possibly_ be the right word – firmly behind her, Rahnis took a deep breath and counted to ten.

Then she extended her count to fifty.

By the time she reached sixty, she'd already received odd looks from two passing weyrfolk, and reached the conclusion that however far she counted she wouldn't feel any less aggravated where she was. Whatever the source of the Weyrleader's certainty, it was proving very elusive to find for herself. Besides, Egritte herself might find some reason to leave her...room, and she didn't trust herself to stay tactful if _that_ happened.

No, it was time to go. Home. Not that Ista would be home for her for very much longer.

_Alaireth?_

_Mmm...?_

The dragon's mind was soft, and still held echoes of sleep and dreams. Rahnis felt a little bad for waking her, but they'd both rest better back in Ista, back in the warm sun with Narnoth and M'ton.

_Would you tell Ormaith we'll be leaving soon? I'm just going to use the washrooms quickly, but then I'd like to go home._

Alaireth's mental touch wrapped her in concern. _The Headwoman_?

_The Headwoman. Be glad you slept through it!_

Half way back to the main cavern, Rahnis took the side tunnel leading to the nearest facilities. As small as they were, she knew she could find the privacy she needed to compose herself. Inside, she went straight to the washstand set along the side wall. Ignoring the soapsand, which was far too heavily scented with sweetgrass for her liking, Rahnis emptied the remains of the waiting jug of cold water into the basin, and splashed a few handfuls onto her face. Deep breaths, and calm thoughts. That was what she needed. And oh, thank Faranth that she wouldn't be coming here on her own!

“Rahnis?”

She whirled round at the sound of the man speaking her name, a hand to her lips to stifle her gasp of shock. She hadn't even heard the door open! “F'ren. How did you find me here? And what do you _want_?”

“Trath asked Alaireth where you were, of course.” He leaned back out through the doorway and looked both ways down the corridor, as if to check if there were any witnesses, before closing the door again and pulling a bolt across. Satisfied with his precautions, he strode towards her and gently took hold of her arms.

If he thought he could...! Rahnis half-heartedly pulled away from him, but she could tell from the look on his face that her initial impression had been wrong, that he was serious about _something_. “What do you want?” she repeated, unconsciously lowering the volume of her voice.

He seemed uncertain of exactly what to say. “Before you leave, you should know....”

“Know what, F'ren?”

“There's just been a change in the Istan leadership.”

This was important, this meant that Vallenka...that N'essen hadn't...but why did she need to be _warned_ of that news? Oh. Oh, no. Rahnis slumped backwards against the wall, dry-mouthed, cursing the slowness of her wits. “What has she done?” she asked needlessly, praying that she was _wrong_ , that Narnoth hadn't....

“I'm sorry,” F'ren said simply. He ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “I wondered, when I saw you arrive alone today. Sh'vek's just told me, a few minutes ago. I'm a Wingleader again.” He sighed, then started chuckling softly. “You should be happy for M'ton. Sh'vek really outdid himself this time.”

“No. Not M'ton.” He hadn't said it, couldn't mean it...could he? Rahnis hugged her arms to her chest, and shook her head, willing herself to ignore the implications for just a little longer.

F'ren gave her a wry smile. “Every bronzerider's dream.”

Rahnis swore, and slammed a fist against the wall. Unwelcome tears were distorting her sight, but there was no way she could stop them. She was going to be alone here, she realised. There was no need to hurry back now. He wouldn't be waiting for her. She hugged her arms across her chest, uncomfortable and hurting. Oh, it was true enough that a flight was just a flight – they'd weathered that once already – but this _wasn't_ just a flight. This was the Weyrleadership, and there were certain expectations on that score.

“I'm sorry,” F'ren repeated. He slid back the bolt on the door, and left her to her tears.


	7. Chapter 7

 

_We stood together on the sands_   
_We bore the heat beneath our feet_   
_White robed we wished each other well_   
_And watched in awe each cracking shell_   
_We stood together on the sands_   
_We stood together, all alone_

_We stood together on the sands_   
_As hungry dragons found their feet_   
_Stumbling from each crumbling shell_   
_Who would they choose? We could not tell!_   
_We stood together on the sands_   
_We stood together, all alone_

_We stood together on the sands_   
_New born, you filled my soul with heat_   
_Your name, that too, I knew as well_   
_Nothing could part us, I could tell._   
_We stood together on the sands_   
_We stood together, ne'er alone_

 

**Evening, 01.12.34**

**Ista Weyr**

 

The sun was already half-way set when Sh'vek and Ormaith emerged from _between_ high above the ocean. Beneath them and behind them, a sea-level observer would have seen a golden-bronze path leading back towards the horizon, but the reflected sunlight died off well clear of the Weyr's edge. Descending into the shadows of twilight as he glided into the Weyrbowl, Ormaith would be just another silhouette against the darkening sky, rather than the back-lit glory he'd intended. Shard it. They'd missed their grand entrance by mere minutes.

 _Everyone's inside now anyway,_ Ormaith noted. _Except for a few latecomers._

_Yes, I see. I think that's the Masterfarmer dismounting now, but he's always late._

_Kellath confirms. Carth greets us. We're not late yet, and you are to meet your sister_ here.

 _Good_ , Sh'vek replied. Ormaith's image was of Ista's Hatching Sands viewed from the passage that ran up to the Weyrleaders' quarters. A far more dignified approach than fighting his way from the main entrance towards Vallenka through the all crowds. With such a small clutch on the Sands there were only a handful of families and dignitaries present to witness the Hatching, but the weyrfolk alone were easily enough to fill the cavern.

Ormaith landed at the base of the steps that led up to Carth's ledge, and Sh'vek dropped lightly to the ground. A little way further off, Master Fadret had finally managed the same feat, in his own unique style.

_Fool man. Insists on a bronze for transport, and he ends up on his back like an up-turned trundlebug every single time. How he thinks that a green or a blue is beneath his dignity when he can't even keep his own feet...._

The bronze dragon returned his mental chuckle, and sprang back into the air. _I'll be on the rim. The stones are still warm, here._

Sh'vek raised a hand to wave him off, then ran up the steps to his sister's weyr. Carth eyed him from her ledge silently; she never deigned to welcome any hatchlings other than her own, not that the resounding noise of the Weyr's other dragons was lessened very much by the absence of her voice. The gold queen looked as well as ever, despite the greening of age around her joints. He gave her a brief nod, and made for the passage that led to the Sands.

Ten or so metres in, beyond the first bend, he realised that he could hear human voices as well as the resonance of the humming dragons. He could make out two glow-cast shadows against the passage wall where it curved again ahead of him. A man and a woman, judging by the pitch of their voices, and although neither of them was even close to shouting there was more than a hint of exasperation coming from the both of them. It didn't take much guessing on Sh'vek's part to finger Ista's new Weyrleader and his former weyrmate as the couple in question. _Listen with me, Ormaith. We may learn something useful here._ A few more steps took him close enough to hear them properly.

“...been very sympathetic about it all,” the man – yes, it was definitely M'ton – said. “I know you don't like her, but-”

“Yes, I abhor her. No secret there. And this isn't the first time she's intentionally interfered in our-”

“Rahnis, I've told you and told you, there was _no_ intent-”

“Ha! That's not the point.”

“Then what is? _Why_ do you keep bringing it up?”

“M'ton. Love. You've never had to deal with her before, you don't _know_ what she's like.”

“Carth clutched Narnoth. Of course I know what she's like. And I know she's been utterly reasonable since the flight. Unlike you.”

“Reasonable? Can you _really_ not see? She's putting on a fardling _act_ , and she's suckered you in just like T'ten and N'essen and-”

“Act! Rahnis, she was _horrified_ at what we'd done to you after the flight, truly she was. Do you think anyone's capable of acting _that_? Oh, don't grimace like that. You weren't there to see her.”

“What is she _doing_ to you? Don't you have a mind of your own any more?”

“By Narnoth's shell, woman, I won't take an insult like that from anyone, least of all you. Vallenka's _right_ , and....” M'ton's voice softened as he reined in his temper. “Rahnis, you're just not yourself. You're not thinking clearly about this. Do you think Alaireth will want to stay here, with Narnoth still mooning over Carth? Bad enough we'll have to stand aside the next time Alaireth rises. Do you think we'd be any better off with you _here_?”

“M'ton. I don't want to leave you here.”

“The High Reaches need you.”

“They need someone, but it needn't be Alaireth and me.”

M'ton sighed. “No, they'd do just as well with Serreni, I'm sure, but what of Ista? I'm Weyrleader, and I have to do what's best for the whole Weyr, you included.”

“Huh. Yes, you're Weyrleader, for all the good it does you. Every bronzerider's dream.”

“No, no, no. You know that. Apart, there's more hope for us, don't you see? There's more, there's....”

“The eggs. Our eggs are hatching, M'ton.”

One of the shadows moved, shortly followed by the second.

 _Well, that was interesting_ , Sh'vek thought at Ormaith.

 _Worrying_ , the dragon replied. _Your sister didn't need to do that. We can handle bronzeriders ourselves. Will they be any good for the Weyr, if the woman is unhappy at being without her mate? She does not wish to leave him._

 _She doesn't want to leave him_ here. _If I'm right, there's a difference._ Sh'vek mulled the thought over in his own mind as he continued down the passage. As gratifying as it was to know that Rahnis would sooner trust her weyrmate's wellbeing to Sh'vek's own High Reaches rather than Vallenka's Ista, that wouldn't mean very much if his Weyr was still a distant second best to sending the man out naked into Threadfall. Not that M'ton was any problem of his any more. Let Vallenka chew him up and spit him out however she wished. _Anyway, they've argued like this before. They might get past it, or they might not. In that case, at least the woman will be...more open to new ideas. Keep watching and listening with me, oh dragon-of-mine._

_Of course, Sh'vek._

_And tell Carth..._

_Oh, they know._

He emerged from the tunnel just in time to see the first of the white-robed candidates entering the cavern's main entrance.

“Brother! I was beginning to wonder if you'd ever arrive!"

Vallenka's voice rang out clearly across the hubbub from a spot near the edge of the tiered stands half a dozen or so rows back. Sh'vek looked up and back over his shoulder to watch her descend. Passing beside Rahnis and the unfortunate M'ton, she placed a hand on her new Weyrleader's arm and gently drew him aside. “M'ton, you can spare a moment of your time, I think.”

“Of course, Vallenka.”

Sh'vek greeted his sister with an embrace, and the bronzerider with a firm handshake. The man's grip was firm enough...but his eyes were darkly circled with exhaustion, and there was a somewhat harried look in his eyes. Hardly surprising, Sh'vek supposed. “Vallenka, you look well. And M'ton. We missed you when Rahnis visited, but I see that the High Reaches' loss has been Ista's gain.”

“It would have been an honour to fly with you, si- Sh'vek.”

A small slip, but it brought a slight smile to Sh'vek's face all the same. “Likewise, I'm sure. But there'll be time for talk later.”

M'ton returned the smile warmly. “The eggs never wait! You'll join us, I assume?”

Sh'vek nodded, and followed the Istan Weyrleaders down to their seats. He found a place beside the Lord Holder of Ista and his wife, and the master fisherman. For once, Nerat's Lord wasn't present – Weyrs didn't always invite a full contingent of witnesses for a junior clutch, not unless there was a favoured relative Standing – but Lord Lomer's absence was a curious omission. The balance in the ongoing battle between Ista and Igen Weyrs over the right to take tithes from the Nerat Holds must have shifted once again, and he doubted that Vallenka was pleased about it.

On the cavern's sandy floor, the candidates had now formed a loose circle around the thirteen eggs under the careful supervision of the Weyrlingmaster, while gold Alaireth retired to one side of the Cavern, her rider newly arrived beside her. The candidates numbered perhaps as many as three dozen, he guessed, with a handful of girls scattered amongst the boys. Even with a small clutch, there were always plenty of youngsters desperate for the chance to Impress, and Sh'vek saw no harm in providing the young dragons with more choice than they really needed. It often made for better riders, he felt – the extra numbers were a good way of winnowing out those potential riders who couldn't stand the pressure of their own expectations without becoming so rigidly, competitively individual that they ruined their chances of finding a partner on the sands. Idly, he wondered which of the Candidates nervously shifting from foot to foot in front of him would be the lucky ones today.

 _Soon now! Soon!_ Ormaith told him, just as the human conversation abruptly ceased. As usual, even the non-riders could feel the change in the atmosphere, so palpable was the eager anticipation broadcasted by the collected dragons. The crack of the first dragon breaking free of its egg echoed perfectly around the cavern.

Sh'vek let himself smile as a wet blue muzzle jutted out, followed by two clumsy wings and the tumbling body of the rest of the young beast. Hatchings: they truly did let you put all other concerns aside, if only for a little while. Was Ormaith ever so-

 _I was never_ that _small!_

The blue righted himself easily, and stretched out his long neck in a creel of appeal towards the queen. Alaireth's eyes whirled in obvious encouragement, and the dragon lurched towards her... no, towards a red-haired boulder of a lad a little to one side of the hatchling's eyeline to his dam. The moment of Impression drew Sh'vek's eyes, though he ignored the shouted name out of long habit. As weyrlings, they would have a hard time ahead of them, and nearly as many pairs would die in training as ever made it as far as the fighting wings. Even the best of them. Oh, A'minek! He stared fiercely at the eggs, willing the next one to hatch. Three fulfilled his unspoken wish all at once, and the circle of candidates unconsciously closed towards them: two greens and a bronze this time. There was the usual scuffling for position amongst the Candidates, but the dragonets seemed as clear as always over their intended riders and Impression occurred fast. Two more blues hatched next, then a brown, then a second green. As he'd often found to be the case, it was the green that took longest to select her rider. Picky, they could be sometimes, but it often paid off in good pairings. Two more greens hatched, then another brown, each finding a youngster to Impress to easily. There was plenty of choice for them today, after all.

The hatching had moved fast. On the Sands, the remaining boys and two girls milled around in confusion, as if certain that there should still be more unhatched eggs than just the two that were left. Well, that was their lot. Normally, there was little to choose between dragon eggs in size, but sometimes you could tell whether an egg was more likely to clutch a bronze than a green, and in this instance both eggs boded better for the former than the latter. The odds were unlikely that both of the last two eggs would hatch bronze, but based on appearances alone either or neither of them could hold another one, at least as far as the usual Lower Caverns speculation went back in the High Reaches. The one closest to the queen had a broad dark stripe standing out against a creamy green-swirled shell. The other, on the far side of what was left of the clutch, was definitely larger than average, almost the size of a queen egg. Which one would the boys on the Sands choose as their best bet, and would they choose to hover close to one or the other, or find a spot in the middle ground? Of course, a bronze _was_ the best dragon a man could ride, but if you weren't suited, that was that. Where one chose to stand on the Sands... well, if there was a good choice of Candidates, and there certainly was today, then maybe it'd make a difference to whether a given boy Impressed or not. Still, this was a Pass, and there'd be Helleath's and Carth's eggs on the sands soon enough too, so there was no reason for a boy to act with unseemly desperation. That would put the dragons off fast enough.

Sh'vek decided on the closer, striped egg as the most likely to hatch a bronze, just in time. Almost as one, the last two eggs cracked their shells. A rather stunted-looking bronze emerged from the one Sh'vek had favoured, while the larger egg shattered around another blue. The dragonets Impressed, and that was the Hatching over and done with. Sh'vek watched as the last two pairs made their way awkwardly out of the cavern, noting the details of conformation that one missed in the initial excitement of the Hatching. Both dragons were fairly well-proportioned beasts, if a little leggy and long in the tail. Then the blue stumbled and spread his wings for balance, giving Sh'vek his hoped for chance to observe the finer details of the wingsails. Well-matched spar bones in the finger-sail, while the joints bounding the secondary mainsail boded well for good control in the air. Alaireth's next clutch would have a different sire, true, but whichever bronze ended up flying her, the hatchlings should be sound beasts. Carth's bloodline bred true.

Sh'vek rose from his seat, and followed the crowd out of the cavern. The hatching feast wouldn't begin until the young dragons had been fed, bathed and bedded, but there'd be entertainment a-plenty before then. Beginning with M'ton, he decided. Now was the time to test the man's mettle. He might be Weyrleader now, but how long would he stay in the job? And what did his character say about that of his weyrmate? Even though he remained at Ista, M'ton would still wield a certain level of influence at the High Reaches through Rahnis. Especially if his dragon lost Carth's _next_ flight.... He caught up with the man at the entrance to the Lower Caverns, where he was conversing with the two Craftmasters brought in to witness the hatching.

“...and three days later we found him in one of t' Off Islands caves. He were half addled by the sun and so full o' salt-thirst that 'e claimed he'd been rescued by shipfish!”

“Shipfish, eh?” M'ton said with a chuckle. “Over-imaginative or not, the lad's a survivor. He'll do well with Cholth, I'm sure. Ah, Sh'vek. Do join us – Master Dascan was just telling us about one of our new weyrlings.”

“I caught the tail end of it. A good Harper-tale. Something for the Weyrsinger to make a ditty out of, perhaps.” Sh'vek slowed his pace, letting the Craftmasters pull ahead. “A decent enough clutch, Weyrleader M'ton, but hopefully Narnoth will have done better by Carth.”

M'ton smiled easily, unconcerned, and shrugged. “Most likely – though she's getting to the end of her breeding turns now.”

So the man _did_ have teeth behind the diffidence. “Don't say that in Vallenka's earshot, please!”

He shook his head. “Naturally not. But Ista is well populated at present, Sh'vek. Helleath should lay her first clutch in another couple of sevendays, and Eljath is maturing well, too. I don't believe I need to add to _our_ numbers to keep Pern thread-free.”

Sh'vek claimed the second barb for his own – he'd turn it back on M'ton in due course. “Ah, if only I could say the same! Your last Threadfalls have gone well, then?”

“Very much so, yes.”

Ista's Weyrleader had been lucky, obviously, but he'd only had four days and three threadfalls in the job so far. And he already looked run-ragged. “No casualties?”

“None from Ista. Luckily, I decided to pass the Half-Circle fall to Igen's Wings; they had a very bad time of it.”

That had everything to do with Weyrleader R'loe and Igen Weyr's competence, and nothing at all to do with M'ton's luck, which definitely wouldn't last very much longer if that was the way the man meant to lead his Weyr. No wonder Lomer hadn't been present! ''Don't let it go to your head. You and your dragon may have won Carth's flight, but Thread is even more fickle than my sister is.''

M'ton lowered his voice. “It was pure chance, to be honest. I had no intention of even letting Narnoth chase, but events moved faster than any of us expected. Thought N'essen had it all under control, but then Trioth came careening back down through the pack with that sprained wing, the rest of us scattered in all directions, and then, there she was. Could hardly _stop_ Narnoth chasing her down at that point. Not that she made it easy for any of us that were left, mind you.”

Pure chance, ha. Carth was a wily old wherry, but if the man wanted to believe his dragon's skill had anything to do with _that_ flight's outcome, he was more than welcome to his own delusions. “Of course not. You don't win a _Weyr_ by chance. Or hold one, either. It takes, skill, tenacity, strength of body and will...everything you are.” He paused, waiting for his point to sink in. “It's more than worth the price. If you're up to it.”

M'ton eyed him thoughtfully. “And if I change my mind on that score?” he asked eventually, even quieter than before. “Or if Vallenka does?”

Sh'vek laughed, wondering briefly what Vallenka had said to him after the Half-Circle fall, and how badly the seahold had suffered. So newly a Weyrleader, and M'ton was already looking for a way out! But it was perfect timing, just perfect, for Sh'vek to slam that particular door shut in his face. “Are you seriously angling for a transfer, _still_?” He laughed again, letting his mockery sound clearly. “My dear boy, if you don't have it in you to hold _this_ Weyr, what good are you to me? Do you think I want a failed Weyrleader as one of my wingleaders? A man who's proved he's not up to the job, but one that others of lesser wits might still rally round as a focal point of dissent? Shells, man, I thought you had more sense!”

M'ton didn't argue the point – not that he had any valid means with which to do so – but there was a tightness to his face that suggested he was getting riled. And as inexperienced as he was, at least he wasn't so weak that he backed off completely. “There are other options than that,” M'ton said. “Ista has other queens here to offer you. Serreni would do any Weyr proud.”

Oh, the fools that people made themselves over love! Sh'vek shook his head. The conversation was playing out predictably enough; time to push the man a little harder. “None that I'd accept just yet. No, you chose well in your Rahnis. I find I rather like the girl, and I'm sure she'll settle down well with us in the north. Maybe...perhaps when Eljath has matured, I might consider trading Rahnis back in exchange. Oh, we'll have got a fair few clutches out of Alaireth by then, and I'm sure at least one of our bronzes will have been able to get another gold egg on her.” Oh, yes. This was definitely a weak spot. “Baxuth will be first to fly her, I expect. He seemed to make a good impression on Alaireth.” He paused again, and added the last unknown ingredient to the pot. “And I suppose there's always F'ren. He was quick enough to take the Wing I had lined up for you...why not your wo-” He broke off mid-word, a movement in the corner of his eye alerting him to Vallenka's arrival.

“Sh'vek!” She placed a hand on M'ton's arm, but although his stance softened, his features lost little of their growing anger.

“Rahnis will do the High Reaches proud, I promise you that,” M'ton said evenly. “Better than Delene ever could.”

 _He called her over, Carth tells me_ , Ormaith relayed to Sh'vek. _He didn't want to say something he'd later regret._

Sh'vek raised his eyebrows quizzically at his sister, and she gave an almost imperceptible nod.

“Apologise, brother. That was quite uncalled for.”

So. Inexperienced, with a certain flavour of weakness, but sense enough to know when he was out of his depth. Some of the time! A straightforward man, but far too honest for his own good. Sh'vek decided he'd learned enough. “I was out of line,” he said. It wasn't an apology, and he could see that M'ton knew it, but at this point he reckoned the man would be happy enough to see their encounter end graciously. “We have great need of her there, and she'll flourish with the chance to put her experience to good use, I'm certain of it. Do tell her that, please.”

M'ton nodded. “We'll speak more later, but I must see to our new weyrlings. If you'll excuse me?”

“But of course!”

Vallenka chuckled under her breath as the Istan Weyrleader made his escape. “Sh'vek, Sh'vek, Sh'vek. What _are_ you trying to do?”

“I'm merely following your lead, dear sister, but I scarcely think I need to act at all. They're driving enough of a wedge between themselves as it is, judging by what I overheard.”

“So you'll send him right back to her arms?”

“Where's Lord Lomer today?” he asked cuttingly.

Vallenka rolled her eyes. “Don't start.”

She beckoned him up the steps to her weyr, but waited until they were right at the top before addressing him again. “Maenida's not getting any better, is she?”

Sh'vek felt a chill running up his spine. “ _Rahnis_ told you that?”

''Shells, no!'' Vallenka said, laughing again. “She was concerned enough about the trials poor Maenida will have coming through fellis addiction....”

“Fellis addiction is the _least_ of my worries.”

“I thought as much. I know how your mind works, and I can tell when you're getting desperate. Tell me, brother. _Will_ she pull through?”

“Not here, please.” He followed her past Carth into the inner weyr, and sank down gratefully into one of the Weyrwoman's chairs. Vallenka busied herself over on the far side of the room, then returned with two glasses half-filled with one of Ista's fermented fruit drinks. Passing one of the glasses over, she sat down opposite him. Sh'vek took a sip, and nearly spat it straight back out again. “Shards, but that's revolting stuff.”

“Came with the last tithe from the Hold. They've been experimenting. It gets better after the first finger, and goes surprisingly well mixed with klah.”

Sh'vek sniffed at the glass again. Potent stuff, but he didn't want to flame his own tongue _before_ the Hatching Feast. He set the glass down, and looked back at his sister. “So. What gave me away?”

Vallenka twisted her glass by the stem. “Aside from taking my advice right from the start? You were _far_ too convincing. You've never had much of the Harper in you, but you can pull it out when it matters. Rahnis had the tune note-perfect when she came back to Ista. Oh yes, you're desperate, all right.”

“Desperate. Very well; I'll concede the point, if you insist on repeating it.” He closed his eyes, and leaned back into the chair. “Eighteen turns. Eighteen turns, I've held the High Reaches, and Maenida's always been there beside me. She wasn't Aldara, she couldn't ever be her...but she gave me so much more than I ever thought she would. I hoped she'd give me a son, too...and I know she wanted that as much as I did. I loved that about her. _Her_ heart was big enough for me as well as Kiath. Never a bother, none of Delene's hysterics, and certainly none of the frightful trickery you burden your own Weyrleaders with.”

“Someone has to be in charge.”

“Hmph. Quite.” He opened his eyes again, and stared up at the twists of rock in the ceiling. “No, she's nothing like you, and I'm damn glad of it. Steady, Maenida was. She got things done without fussing around about them. Let me manage the Weyr and Ormaith, kept Kiath happy, and Kiath was the calm centre at the Weyr's heart. And as bad as it is seeing Maenida so useless, Kiath is worse. Can you imagine it, Vallenka? We _need_ them, Ormaith and I, need them to hold the Weyr strong...and they're _broken_.” His voice caught on the last word. Broken, and the Weyr was crumbling around them, threatening to take him down with it. He wouldn't lose this fight, he wouldn't, couldn't! Sh'vek reached over and took a gulp from his glass.

Vallenka took a sip from her own drink. “Mmm. Yes, that's much the impression Rahnis gave me. She thinks your fidelity and determination to see Maenida back to full health quite admirable – and you should thank me for placing you in such good contrast, by the way.”

Sh'vek let himself smile slightly. “Was there _much_ shouting, before she remembered her place?”

“Very little, actually. She knew before she got back to Ista.” The Weyrwoman eyed him over the rim of her glass. “Do let me know which of my riders sent word north, if you ever find out. No, she doesn't see you as fool enough to suffer Delene as Weyrwoman – her words, not mine – and that means Maenida is more likely to recover than not, in her mind. So. Will she?”

“I still don't know. Master Rynder says there's always hope for improvement, but she'll never fight Thread again. Too much stress, too much risk of a relapse, or worse.... I have to think of the future, Vallenka.”

“So. A future with Delene as Weyrwoman? You'd better prepare yourself well for that!”

“We'll see. Spring is soon enough to flame that tangle. I'll know how much I can expect from Maenida by then, and Delene too. With some of the pressure taken off her, she'll have the time to find her feet as acting Senior, and if she can't....”

Vallenka frowned. “You're not considering-”

“We'll see, I said.” Sh'vek stood up, and started to pace the room. “But why not? You've solved one of my problems on that front rather neatly, after all. And I can be perfectly honest about the fact that I had nothing to do with it at all.”

“So, you think you can manage her then?”

As if there was any doubt of that! “Absolutely. And your advice was spot on. She might respect me more for my fidelity than my authority at present, but that egg will hatch golden in time. In the meanwhile, she can spend all her stubbornness untangling Egritte's and Delene's messes, and measuring herself against my obscenely high expectations. She can even continue her affair with M'ton if she wants, and can find the time – assuming they do manage to smooth things over before she leaves.”

“If she can find the time? It's M'ton who'd need the most help there. Hmmm. Did I ever tell you about Weyrleader K'sin?”

Sh'vek had thought he was well versed on the Weyrleaders of the past, but that name drew a complete blank. “Who?”

“Another day, then. You seem to have things well in hand at present.” Vallenka finished her drink, and rose to join him. “One word of warning, brother. I saw the winglists you sent over for her. She's not a complete fool – do you think she'll look on you as well as she does right now once she's realised what a wherry's nest you had lined up for her lover?”

With a sweep of his forearm, Sh'vek brushed his sister's concerns aside. “Any inadequacies in that wing can be laid at F'ren's feet easily enough.”

The Weyrwoman shook her head, unconvinced. “The alcoholic? The one with hallucinogenic headaches who can't be trusted with firestone? The human trundlebug? The brown with more scar tissue than wingsail? That troublesome young woman with the blue? The searchrider with the vapours? And the usual gaggle of suicide-prospects and weyrlings?”

“Tsk, tsk! There's a lot of _very_ good men in that wing.”

“Fiercely loyal to you?”

Sh'vek grinned at her. “Naturally. I'm not going to rush into any decisions, Vallenka. Maenida may yet recover, but if not, as far as both our Weyrs are concerned, Delene is my choice for Maenida's successor. Is that clear?”

“Oh, yes.”

He took his sister by the arm, and gestured at the door. “Shall we rejoin the crowds? I could do with something to wash that foul taste out of my mouth.”

 

 

 

 

“And there he was, bold as a buck wherry, with one of Lord Pallo's prime layers in his jaws – still flapping away like mad, that bird was, and the feathers went everywhere! I took the rap for that, I can tell you, but I doubt even a dragon could be as faithful a companion as my old Dusty. Nor half as good at catching snakes, eh? Haha. Hahaha!”

Masking his silence with food, Sh'vek speared another forkful of spiced sweet-greens, and tried to summon up the will to say something polite to Ista's Lord Wallosen in reply. Perhaps the man would choke and save him the trouble. Anything would be preferable to another canine anecdote! “Did you have family on the Sands today?” he asked as the man's laughter finally died away. Sh'vek doubted that any of the Lord's own family had stood, but at least it was a change of subject.

“A nephew. Got a green, which I can't say surprised me all that much.”

And that was the end of _that_ conversation. Wallosen turned his eyes back to his food, concentrating on eating the rest of his meal. Silently, Sh'vek thanked Faranth for the gift of the other man's prejudices.

 _Next time someone compares a dragon to a spit-canine, I'll eat it_ , Ormaith told him.

 _Save me a piece. I hear they're quite palatable with the right mix of spices._ Sh'vek pushed his finished plate to one side, and glanced down the garland-bedecked table. Serreni caught his eye, and winked cheerily at him, knowing full well what kind of table companion he'd been inflicted with in Wallosen. Shells, but she looked more and more like her mother every Turn. M'ton was still eating, but hopefully the Weyrleader would begin the toasts before Wallosen's reticence wore off... and before he became too well lubricated to do it without embarrassing himself. Thank Faranth there were only thirteen new weyrling pairs to toast! The drink had been flowing far too freely already that night. He'd managed to avoid most of the refills, and had been pleased to see Rahnis doing the same – the High Reaches had Thread to fight tomorrow, after all – but the Istans and their guests were under no such restraint.

A few more interminable minutes passed before M'ton finally placed his cutlery neatly to one side, and rose from his chair.

“Riders and Weyrfolk of Ista!”

Cheers erupted from around the room, and M'ton raised a hand for silence.

“Honoured guests.”

A few more cheers sputtered fitfully across the cavern.

“Thank you all for the hard work that's made today such a special day for our new weyrlings. Weyr-, Hold- and Craft-bred, they're all remarkable young people. Be proud of their achievement today, and join me now as we wish them well as they begin their new lives as dragonriders of Ista.” He raised his glass, and gestured for the first boy who'd Impressed to rise from his seat. “L'zir, rider of blue Cholth!”

Sh'vek cheered dutifully and drank his way through the rest of the toasts, glad that the evening was finally drawing to a close. It was past time to return home, and relieve Delene of her care of Kiath and Maenida. _Tell Earith that R'fint can send the weyrlings over as soon as he's ready_ , he thought at Ormaith. _I don't want to linger here any longer than we have to._

_Done. H'koll and Ruarnoth have a team of three ready to depart. They will join us here soon._

_Good. Nudge Narnoth for me too, would you?_ Sh'vek pushed back his chair and stood, waiting for the Weyrleader to react. A moment later, he stiffly looked Sh'vek's way, and nodded.

M'ton raised his hand again, silencing the Weyr once more. “Ista Weyr. Tonight, we've welcomed thirteen new riders into our hearts. Tonight, we must also bid farewell to another. Rahnis, rider of gold Alaireth, bred of Carth and Trioth....” M'ton's voice died away as his weyrmate rose and walked over to face him. She'd made an obvious effort with her appearance that evening, and there was a look in her eyes that any fool could read, challenging her lover to choose to act otherwise. Ha. As if the man would dare defy Vallenka in this! “Rahnis of Ista... the High Reaches requests you and your queen in transfer. We thank you for your Turns of service to Ista, and to Pern. Will you leave us now to join High Reaches Weyr?”

Slowly, she reached up to her shoulder and pulled free her rank knots, gold and black interwoven with Ista's orange. “I will.”

M'ton held out his hand to take the knots from her, but she instead let them slip free and fall to the ground, and made no move to retrieve them.

 _Told you so, Vallenka says_ , Ormaith relayed to him via Carth. So, they hadn't mended things between them yet, had they? No matter. M'ton hissed her name in exasperation, but she ignored him, turning instead to Sh'vek.

“Weyrleader.”

Sh'vek walked over to meet her, feeling in his pocket for the replacement junior weyrwoman knots he'd brought with him for the occasion. “Goldrider Rahnis. On behalf of my Weyr, I welcome you as a rider of the High Reaches. It will be an honour to fly with you, weyrwoman.” He settled her new knots into place on her shoulder, the dark blue of his own Weyr replacing the orange, and turned her to face her former weyrfolk. Vallenka handed him a fresh glass of wine. Raising it, he smiled, and gave them the customary toast. “Ista Weyr. I present to you: Rahnis, a weyrwoman of the High Reaches, rider of gold Alaireth. May she be wise and true, for all of us who rely on her, and may her queen rise well, and often. Rahnis and Alaireth!”

He watched her face, and that of M'ton, as the Weyrfolk drank her health. Neither looked especially happy, nor did they look at each other until well after the cheers had subsided, and then only briefly before M'ton downed the last of his wine and left the table.

 _Ormaith_ , Sh'vek began, _would you tell Alaireth that-_

Before he could finish the thought, Rahnis looked up at him questioningly, and spoke. “Alaireth tells me there's a green waiting on our ledge. You've sent weyrlings to help with my possessions?”

So, she thought he was overstepping himself, did she?

 _She does_ , Ormaith confirmed.

 _Too bad for her, then_. “I trust we won't overburden them.”

“Hardly. But you might have warned me we'd be leaving right away.”

“Thread falls tomorrow. If you wish to stay longer, I won't deny you the rest of the evening to make your goodbyes.” He said it with only the lightest touch of scorn, certain that she'd get the message.

“But?”

“ _But_?”

“There's always a 'but'. I prefer to know what it is _before_ making my choices.”

Sh'vek pursed his lips. Well. He couldn't say that Vallenka hadn't warned him. “The weyrlings will do your unpacking as well. Badly. And next time, you won't need to worry about hypothetical _buts_.”

She met his gaze evenly, then nodded. “There'll be no need for direct orders tonight, sir. I'll be ready to leave as soon as I've changed into something warmer. Weyrwoman Vallenka?”

“Mmm?”

“I simply don't have the words to thank you properly for all the many things you've taught me.”

Vallenka laughed in delight. “Oh, _well_ said, girl. Let's leave it at that, shall we?” She waved a hand in dismissal. “Shoo.”

Once the girl had left, Sh'vek nudged M'ton's chair to one side with his leg, and perched on the edge of the table beside his sister. “That was gracious of you, letting her insult you like that.”

The Weyrwoman stretched out her arms, and shook her head. “She was brittle tonight. The attitude gives it away, particularly when her gold is proddy, though I imagine you'll be well used to it by _then_. Oh, I could have taken her to task for it, true, but you wouldn't want me to distress one of your goldriders at a time like this, would you?”

Sh'vek could neither help nor conceal his instinctive twitch of irritation. “Audrealle is long dead.” And A'minek with her. “No need to bring that up again now. Good night, sister.” He pushed himself away from the table, and walked away towards the exit to the Weyrbowl, half hoping that his sister had something more to say.

 _She won't,_ Ormaith told him as he left, quite unnecessarily. Vallenka never belaboured her victories.

 

 

 

 

Three hours later, Sh'vek found himself in full agreement with his sister's earlier assessment of his new weyrwoman's mood. Rahnis and M'ton had managed to find enough time for a short but vitriolic argument before her departure, and if she'd left some of her fire behind them in Ista, it had only been replaced by the icy chill of _between_. He'd arranged a short reception for her back at the Weyr, but she'd barely exchanged more than names and ranks with half the people she'd spoken with, and even with Benden white on offer the event had ended more quickly than he'd planned for. The late arrival of an entire Wing of dragons hadn't helped matters much, nor had the drunken overfamiliarity of one or two bronzeriders who'd been brushed aside with...well, not ease, exactly – more of a tight-lipped, frozen disdain. It made a change from Delene's habitual histrionics, he'd thought at the time, until he'd realised how close Rahnis was to breaking. Let those emotions thaw out, and the Weyr would have a flood on its hands all right. It had almost been a relief when she'd seized on an off-hand remark by R'fint as an excuse to get back to her own weyr and properly unpack, at least until J'garray's overly comprehensive offer of assistance had forced him into pulling rank and accompanying her in his stead.

Which was how he'd ended up spending the last hour shifting furniture with the new Assistant Weyrlingmaster, nearly breaking his back in the process. Three times, he and H'koll had moved that fardling bed, three! And if the work hadn't had more to do with punishing them both for their interference in her life than with genuine aesthetic choices, he didn't deserve to be Weyrleader. He should have let J'garray try his luck after all.

Sh'vek straightened up, and used a hand to rub some of the ache out of his spine. Across the room, Rahnis was gazing speculatively at the heavy wooden dresser beside him, but enough was enough. He caught her eyes, and shook his head slightly. “Well. I think everything's in order now. Isn't it.”

Rahnis forced a smile. “Oh, it's much better now. My thanks to you both. Can I offer you something to drink, before you leave?”

Sh'vek ignored the hint. “Please. Just klah – though I think I'll have Ormaith send someone with a fresh pot.” _And get them to make it as bitter as possible, would you?_

_How else?_

“H'koll?”

“Cold's fine for me. No sense wasting it.”

Sh'vek smiled to himself. His tastes were well known in the Weyr, but at least the greenrider wasn't spoiling the joke. He moved to sit down in one of the weyr's two mismatched chairs to wait, but had scarcely reached it when Ormaith bespoke him again.

_F'ren comes. He won't be put off. It's urgent that he speaks with you, he says._

Sh'vek frowned. Across the room, Rahnis paused midway through pouring H'koll his klah.

“Is something wrong, Weyrleader?”

“Just a report for me. Nothing to worry yourself over.” He rose and walked out past the dozing gold onto the ledge. A rapidly moving shadow soon resolved itself into the form of F'ren running up the steps to Alaireth's weyr.

“F'ren. Why weren't you with the other Wingleaders?”

“We were short on coal, so I took Snowfall to Crom.” The man was drenched to the skin, and noticeably shivering.

“M'arsen told me you'd left. Right after the evening meal. It doesn't take _that_ long to load up, nor did the rest of your Wing neglect to return in a timely fashion. Why weren't you here?”

“I'm sure Rahnis wasn't greatly offended by my absence. Had our roles been reversed, I know _I_ wou-”

Sh'vek lifted a finger in warning. The man had made no secret of the fact that he still had issues with the Istan girl – or at least that he wanted everyone to think he did – but that wasn't the reason that had brought him to her ledge. “You'll apologise to her in the morning. Now. Ormaith told me it was urgent.”

“We were at Crom. They had aurora, there.”

Sh'vek closed his eyes. “Aurora? I suppose it's not _too_ late in the turn. How extensive?”

“All the way to Tillek.” F'ren pulled his scarf off from around his neck, and wrung it out. “Above the clouds, that is, and it's still faint everywhere west of local midnight. I also checked with Weyrwoman Granatia. Benden's had it over their lands too, everywhere north of Bitra.”

Sh'vek wanted to swear, but held it in check. With an omen like aurora...tomorrow's threadfall might be no different to the usual, or it might be heavy clumps the whole way through. “So. And the weather? What's that warm front doing?”

“Lingering over High Reaches Hold. No chance of crackdust for us, Weyrleader, and the rain clouds will be too low to the ground to do us any good, even if they stick around long enough. You know what the geography's like there.”

Better than F'ren did, that was certain.

“Shall I assemble the other Wingleaders?” the bronzerider continued.

“And why would you want to do that?” Clumps or not, Sh'vek had given the Wings their orders already, and there was never any certainty over the exact form a threadfall would take. The weather was no different, nor the landscape, and they'd fight it the way Sh'vek always did. Harder work for the Wings, perhaps...but only if the Fall was a bad one. Changing his tactics now, after three days of intensive drilling, now that would _guarantee_ a disaster. “They'll hear it from me in the morning. And not a second sooner.”

“Sir.” F'ren made the single syllable a clear insult, but then his eyes flicked to something past Sh'vek's shoulder. “Rahnis. Apparently I owe you an apology.”

“It would have been nice to see a familiar face, but really, there's no need t-”

F'ren snorted a laugh, which soon became a sneeze. “Thank Faranth for that. We actually agree! Not that choosing between Weyr business and _your_ company was a difficult call to make. I certainly have no intention of making _that_ mistake again.” He made a half turn towards the path back down to the bowl, then abruptly spun back to face Sh'vek. “Weyrleader, will there be...?”

So, the man was capable of remembering at least _some_ of his manners. Or maybe he was merely acting to emphasise that lie about Weyr duty being his priority. Ha. “Finish apologising first, F'ren.” Curious to see where this might lead, Sh'vek drew back and sat himself down on an outcrop of rock, allowing Rahnis to move past him.

“Mistake? You didn't give me that impression at the time, as I recall.”

“Don't hold me responsible for _your_ lack of decent comparison!”

This was exactly the kind of scenario that Sh'vek had been hoping to provoke sooner or later, and he could hardly believe his luck. When better than a moment when the man was already tired, riled up and with his bollocks half frozen off? F'ren had enviable control at times, but tonight it was clearly slipping. Sh'vek smiled at the escalating exchange of insults, more than content to let the two of them play it out however they wanted. Though he couldn't shake the slight niggling worry that they _were_ playing it out, that the whole thing was merely an act devised for his benefit....

Ormaith was quick to address his concerns. _I'm listening to their dragons. Trath attempts to soothe his rider's temper. Alaireth rouses. She knows her rider is upset, and asks me why you allow it._

 _Oh? Well, time will tell._ Sh'vek turned his attention back to Rahnis' second argument of the night, greatly amused by her lack of consistency.

“M'ton's a better man than you in every respect!”

“And Cloudburst had the makings of the best wing in the Weyr – until you and your proddy dragon came along. Three Turns, we wasted ourselves as wingriders!”

“You can hardly hold _me_ responsible for the waste you've made of your own life, F'ren.”

F'ren lifted his eyes to the clouded sky, and sighed in exasperation. “What _is_ it with Istan queens, eh? But perhaps Vallenka will take pity on you and your _better man_ before you waste yourself too.”

“I have no intention of wasting anything, least of all my own life.”

“Oh _good_. I'll tell J'garray and M'gan their odds of bedding you by Turnover have shortened, shall I?”

Aghast, Rahnis took a step backwards, but there was still bite enough in her reply. “And yours have lengthened right the way to the fardling Red Star, F'ren.”

“Weren't you listening? I don't make the same mistake twice.” He lowered his voice, though not with any real attempt to speak beyond his Weyrleader's hearing, even glancing Sh'vek's way to make it obvious that this was for his ears just as much as for hers. “I _would_ have been Weyrleader if not for you.”

“Ha!” Sh'vek barked a laugh, shaking his head. He'd learned long ago not to dwell on irrelevancies like that. And even if F'ren was right, so what? The very fact that the bronzerider had let that day eat away at his mind for so long was a sure sign of weakness in the man.

Rahnis, her voice dripping with scorn, was quick to answer F'ren's claim. “Weyrleader, you? Faranth forfend! If it wasn't for _your_ fardling superiority complex, Ista wouldn't be overflowing with queens, and I'd never have been asked to transfer to this frozen wasteland of a Weyr.”

“At least I _have_ some ambition.”

“And what's that supposed to mean?”

F'ren gave her a look that he surely must have picked up from the days when Sh'vek himself had been his Weyrlingmaster, with a whole clutch of deadglows to shape into riders. The silence between them stretched out, until it was broken by the bronzerider's chattering teeth. He grimaced and clenched his jaw, before speaking again. “Look at you. Perfectly content to moulder away as a junior queenrider, growing as old and dry as your beloved records. No wonder Narnoth decided to fly Carth. I'm just surprised M'ton didn't give up on you sooner.”

Now that was a low blow. Sh'vek watched the colour draining out of Rahnis' face, while Alaireth's bellow gave voice to her rider's anguish.

“Get off my ledge. Now.” She turned and walked stiffly back into her weyr.

As if her dignified retreat was too much for him, F'ren insisted on flaming the last Thread of the Fall before he left. “I thought you'd never ask,” he shouted at her back, then almost as an afterthought he turned his head to look round at Sh'vek. “Weyrleader,” he said mildly, as if nothing of any note had taken place on the ledge at all.

“Report to me at dawn. There _will_ be a penalty for this appalling behaviour, F'ren.”

F'ren nodded once and left, without a single glance behind him. Inside the weyr, Sh'vek could hear Rahnis crying quietly beside her dragon, while H'koll offered whatever words of comfort he could. _Definitely not an act_ , he thought at Ormaith.

_No. Not from her._


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who make use of them, be aware that new tags have been added for this chapter, and may be applicable again (to a greater or lesser extent) in subsequent chapters. As always, if you have any specific concerns, feel free to ask for details.

_Fire and stone, steel and water_  
 _Listen, every son and daughter_  
 _Now the passing Red Star nears_  
 _Guard yourselves from Threadscore's tears_

_Water, fire, stone and steel_  
 _Green makes Thread a perfect meal_  
 _Act before it is too late_  
 _Raise walls of stone and roofs of slate_

_Stone and water, steel and fire_  
 _Save your homes from Threadfall's ire_  
 _Flood the fields and fire the gutters_  
 _Check and close the metal shutters_

_Fire and water, steel and stone_  
 _Thread won't even leave a bone_  
 _If you want to stay alive_  
 _These will help you to survive_

 

**Afternoon, 2.12.34**

**Threadfall above High Reaches Hold**

 

In the senseless black of _between_ , Trath's tail-tip score was an unknown quantity.

_I jumped fast, F'ren. And we took the Thread with us._

It was one that Avret's Vorth should have flamed, but F'ren had no time to spare to curse either of them now. He pushed his anger aside and concentrated on their place in the Wing, Lirroth north-high off Trath's wingtip finishing off the other tangle, and-

Pain filtered through his bond with Trath as they returned to Pern's skies, but they _had_ jumped fast enough, and the bronze was doing his best to ignore it, already powering upwards ready to start searing their next clump. They'd had worse injuries and it certainly wasn't bad enough to interfere with their threadfighting. Assured of his dragon's health, F'ren looked over his shoulder to scan the airspace behind them as he hauled Trath's last full sack of firestone up to his thighs. Ofteth still flaming Threads rather than empty air, Zallackuth tiring, Gilleath coming out of a barrel roll, Nooth banking north.... _No, No, NO!_

 _BLINK, NOOTH!_ Trath's mental voice was as loud as he could manage as he ordered the green safely _between_ , before she could veer into the path of Piccinth's flame. But there was no time to spare watching empty air waiting for her to return; Thread was falling. F'ren twisted the sack's carry-loop around a cleat on his fighting straps just as Trath banked south, letting the prevailing winds boost the length of his flame up and across the full extent of the tangle.

_Nicely done._

_I've found Vorth, called her back to her place. Avret sent her after a different single._

_Fardling woman. And Nooth? Shard it, you'd think she only had the one wing, she's that reluctant to use the other. Did V'tin_ ever _vary his drills, Trath? Half the dragons he left us with are almost too one-sided to believe!_

_Nooth's back and flaming again._

_Good._ Sharing his dragon's vision of the sky ahead, F'ren directed Trath towards the heavier of the two clumps within their reach. While Trath warned off the pairs of dragons to either side, F'ren pulled two small chunks of firestone out of the sack, and threw them ahead for his bronze to snatch out of the air. The dragon's second stomach still felt full to F'ren's senses, but this was one of those Falls where the expected chances to top up with firestone could easily vanish. _More on the switchover?_

_A little._

The bronze adjusted his approach to counter a slight downdraught, and flamed the Threads perfectly. Trath's mind was filled with a fierce pride in his work, the earlier score already forgotten.

 _Lirroth did well back there, I noticed_ , F'ren thought at Trath as the dragon flamed again. St'larna had guided her dragon deftly and safely around a particularly awkward clump, spiralling long enough for the blue's shorter flame to sear the whole mess into char. _Thought Barruth would take that one, though._

_Mmm. Vorth goes for the double; this one's ours. Check Tolcth for me - he warned Ulleth off, but she says he's pressured._

F'ren twisted round at his dragon's request. He found the brown diving after a tightly packed group of half a dozen Threads, losing altitude fast but still with time enough to sear them all before the ground. _R'dallan's showing off. The thermals are nasty nearer the ground, and it'd be all too easy for him to misjudge them. Tell Tolcth to use Ulleth as a marker when they're done, and remind him we're fighting paired for a reason._ With Tolcth as the exception, the front rank of his Wing was loosely strung out across the threadfall corridor, almost to the brief respite of the trailing edge. He'd brought the bronzes and most of the browns forward, pairing each with one of the more agile greens and blues. The Threads were clumped heavily and problematically, just as the past night's aurora had augured. The central parts of most tangles were too much for the flame of a single smaller dragon to deal with, but the bronzes and browns also suffered for their larger wingspan, often finding themselves unable to get close enough to flame safely without the assistance of a green or blue to pick off the singletons. Teaming the dragons into pairs was somewhat unorthodox, but the alternative of calling for assistance as and when required was in F'ren's view far too haphazard and chaotic in the confusion of a Fall like the one they were fighting.

Twenty lengths behind and five below, Wingsecond D'barn led the wing's second rank, biased towards the faster dragons in the wing who could take on the Threads that the leading rank missed. D'barn had managed his part of the wing competently enough so far, but his placement had one added advantage - F'ren only had to suffer his inevitable complaints about F'ren's leadership when the man reported to him through Corhoth. Thinking of that, he was overdue for another. _Trath, bespeak Corhoth after the next Thread. I'm going to start bringing the second shift in on the next sweep. Who does he need to send back first?_

The upper Wings were clearing the tail end of the Fall well, and even with responsibility for both lower trailing quadrants, F'ren's leading half of Snowfall finally seemed to have the job in hand. Judging by the Threads still heading Snowfall's way from above, they'd have light work of it for the last few minutes of their current sweep. Time enough for his racing heart to steady somewhat, before they hopped _between_ to the thickest part of the Fall once more. _And tell the Wing they've done well on this one. Warn them to watch for my signal. We'll go_ between _as a unit as soon as the last Thread's flamed at this end._

 _Corhoth says Eyduth tires, and Aballath, too. Says_ he _hasn't had a tail-score since their weyrling days._

 _Oh, aye? Tempted to ask him why he remembered_ that _but not the rest of his training... no, don't relay it. Let's scandalise him a little more. Ask Alaireth if she'd like some assistance from a few of our first shift before they head home. Only fair, given the mess we left her to clean up earlier._

_Alaireth says they'll be very welcome. Rahnis would prefer it if you 'did your fardling job properly in the first place'._

F'ren winced. _We can but try. One more stone while we've space for you to chew it?_

_Please._

The transfer _between_ back to the thick of Threadfall passed without incident, and by the time they closed with the trailing edge once again F'ren was almost satisfied with his Wing's progress. Half a full Threadfall fought, and they were finally starting to gel together and flame effectively. Better than he'd hoped, and the fact that Snowfall had only lost the one pair so far was certainly something of a relief. T'shell and brown Bennedth had simply failed to reappear from _between_ early on in the fall, but as sorely missed as they'd be, given the man's state of mind it hadn't come as a great surprise. Oh, there'd been mishaps and injuries a-plenty – and most of those would have been entirely avoidable if the dragons and riders concerned had been following his orders properly in the first place – but on the whole his Wing had been lucky to suffer only two major scorings so far. And at least the minor hurts served as a good way of getting the less effective members of the Wing to focus on their job. They didn't try arguing the point with Thread, did they?

Trath gave a mental laugh. _Gavondath might try._

 _Well, we'll find out soon_. F'ren lifted an arm and circled it, signalling the line of dragons newly arrived in the clear air behind the trailing edge to take their places in the Wing's formation. _Anyone else from the first shift still fresh enough to remain a little longer, Trath?_

_Chirrith, and Lirroth. Ofteth too, but-_

_No, just leave it with those two. E'dar might not have asked Ofteth to flame something that isn't there_ this _Fall, but it'll be a warm day_ between _before I ever assign him to the queens' wing._

_Done. Our wing is ready, F'ren. And I have the new placement from Telemath. See?_

_Got it. Then let's go._ Visualising the terrain and the fighting Wings ahead of them, and the positions of Gavondath and Puteth to either side, he pulled his arm back down, and Trath took them _between. Another hour will see us through the worst of it_ , he thought at the bronze, _but this passage will be rough._

 _They'll settle down fast_ , Trath replied. _Be ready!_

Daylight returned, and F'ren's first concern was for their immediate surrounds. If everything went right, they'd emerge just on the edge of the airspace already cleared by the other Wings, but if not, they'd need to blink immediately. In that first second, all appeared well, with the nearest tangles of Thread exactly where he'd expected to see them, two wingbeats distant. The air was clear directly above them, and also to the south where a round dozen of Snowfall's dragons were aligned in perfect formation...but then he heard the first bellow of alarm from one of the dragons towards the northern edge of the Wing, soon echoed by Gavondath and Trath himself. F'ren twisted round, and instantly screamed out a curse of his own. Not at the Threads, but at the empty air where Olbith, Barruth, Graslath, Venth and Sacquith should have been, but inexplicably weren't. A dull sense of horror trickled through him from Trath's mind, sign that some dragon or other had suffered a serious injury, though it wasn't bad enough to signal a death that the Weyr would keen for later.

 _They live, F'ren,_ Trath told him curtly.

F'ren could feel the immense strain his dragon was under as Trath prioritised the need to fight the falling Threads over finding the missing dragons. That they _did_ live was enough for now. The bronze banked sharply, and flame erupted from Trath's jaws, searing the tangle ahead of them. The change in angle and altitude was enough to position him to pick of another pair of Threads, ones that Gavondath would have flamed if Trath hadn't already directed her to the next clump along to the north. Further along, the Wing was instinctively shifting along to fill in the gap – a poor move if the missing dragons were to have space enough to return, but no dragon could easily stand by and let Threads fall unfought. _Don't let them bunch up, Trath. We've got height enough to get this gap plugged if we can, but not at the expense of half the corridor._

_I know. Corhoth and I have found Sacquith at the Weyr. Something was wrong with their visual, they're terrified by it, but they return to fight. Gavondath, hold position._

_And the rest? Where the flaming, fardling, fu-_

_They come. Ormaith speaks!_

Trath's mind shrank against the other bronze's enraged tirade, and F'ren swore again as understanding of Venth and T'forgil's mistake emerged. The fool man had used the wrong dragons as marker – he'd remembered Graslath, but instead of picturing Sacquith in place on the other side, he'd used blue Farlath, who now flew with Flamestrike. Four of the five missing dragons had ended up on the upper level in the middle of the Weyrleader's wing, and there might have been even more if Sk'barn and Sacquith hadn't sensed the error, the mismatch in the _wheres_ that the two dragons either side of them would soon exist in, right at the very instant that they jumped _between_. The fact that the young pair were still alive said a lot for their presence of mind. He'd have to remember to commend them later, if Sh'vek gave him the chance.

The missing dragons blinked back into position one by one. Olbith had a minor wing puncture, but Barruth, Graslath and Venth seemed to be unharmed. F'ren ground his teeth in frustration as Trath relayed the Weyrleader's further words: two dragons in Flamestrike hadn't been as lucky, and one was even now being assisted back to the Weyr by Alaireth. No time to dwell on it now though. The threads ahead were bad enough, but they'd left a dense swathe behind them as well. F'ren made a decision on the fly. _Tell D'barn to send a couple of blues from his rank ahead to join us, and he'll have to cover the usual residue with what's left. Venth can clear up his own mess. It would be right above the fardling Hold! Barruth to assist them._

 _Done,_ Trath replied. _We assist Puteth next – there – then there's a good alignment for us beyond them. After that, I'll need more stone._

_Got it._

F'sigger's Puteth was facing an awkward tangle, but together, Trath and the green made short work of it. Four powerful wingbeats carried Trath away from the charred remains towards the first in a succession of single threads; those flamed and Trath supplied with more firestone, they dropped back to resume position at the Wing's focal point.

 _Barruth returns_ , Trath told F'ren as he angled himself to sear their next clump. _Next to Graslath. Something's not right._

F'ren watched closely as the brown re-appeared from _between_ , and although there was no sign of score or strain in Barruth's flight, he was unwilling to ignore his dragon's own instincts. _Push them. Something happened in the clear up? Did they run into trouble countering the fireheight thermals?_

There was a pause before Trath replied, but when he did his mind was filled with urgency. _The groundcrews. Barruth says they can manage it, but they can't, and he knows it, but P'lok is...P'lok is...._

_Show me! Now!_

Trath's image was doubled up: Barruth's memory overlaid with Venth's more distant real-time view. A heavily tangled clump that the low-level winds had surrounded by a good half dozen single threads, and five men from the Hold's groundcrew stupidly waiting right beneath it, to do what they could to fight it, rather than getting clear and dealing with the inevitable burrows afterwards.

They didn't stand a chance.

 _There wasn't room, we couldn't do it, I can't, we can't_ , Barruth told Trath, mind full of a panic which was only half driven by his rider's broken nerve. Trath started to backwing frantically, stilling his forwards momentum through the air, ready to take whatever action was possible, whatever the cost.

F'ren choked back a sob, sensing what his dragon had in mind. There wasn't enough room for a brown; how much less for a bronze? No time to call in more help, and Alaireth would still be at the Weyr. _Where?_ he asked, frantically tearing at the buttons of his coat. There might be a way, a chance, a small chance....

 _Here_ , Trath told him, showing him the tangle that they _could_ destroy so long as they approached it just right...and falling just a short distance above and behind it, the single Thread that they _couldn't_ , the one that would surely take the dragon's power of flight if not his life.

 _No,_ F'ren insisted grimly. Not if he could help it. He pulled his right arm out of his sleeve, and adjusted the visual slightly as the bronze's mind closed firmly around it. _There. My turn. Quickly now!_

Trath took them _between_.

In the empty dark, F'ren rehearsed the necessary motions. Twist, wrap, flick and reach. He'd have to watch his aim, making sure he didn't simply bat the Thread away onto Trath, and he'd have to keep it at arms length for as long as it took.... Oh Faranth, what were they doing? Then back to the Weyr, almost certainly...assuming they both lived that long.

 _We will_ , Trath said. _Be strong!_

Daylight returned, and the pounding of his own heartbeat in his ears. Trath had emerged from _between_ already flaming, the downstroke of his wings close enough to the ground that the Holders would have been flattened if they hadn't already been knocked off their feet by the air displaced by the sudden appearance of the bronze dragon. It took the best part of several seconds before F'ren found the thread that would score him against the brightness of the sky, but by then he had most of his coat wrapped about his left arm; enough, he hoped, to give him the time he needed. He flung out his arm, sending the excess wherhide twisting out beyond his hand, meeting the Thread in mid air with enough momentum to trap it. After that time seemed to stretch, much as other riders had told him it might when things went badly wrong. Every heartbeat of time was a battle in itself: catching the thread as it fell without flinching away, twisting and shifting to keep the tumbling loops that threatened to spill over and away from him under control. Oh shells, but it was hideous stuff...and it was growing before his eyes as it consumed his coat, as it would continue to grow when it started consuming _him..._. But even deep within the horror of facing Thread so close, he found himself marvelling at the wonder of the late afternoon sun hitting Trath's hide, and the fire reflected in the facets of his dragon's blazing red eyes. If he could have only frozen time there and then...but there was only so much coat left wrapped around his hand and arm. Trath was turning now, still flaming, his left wing rising through the air towards F'ren's outstretched arm and the man's-length of thread that was still tumbling downwards. Knowing he couldn't control it or keep it at arm's length any longer, F'ren gave it a gentle tug, drawing the last of it in as close as he dared, hoping it wouldn't slip and loop onto his unprotected chest or spine, or worse, down onto Trath. And then the pain hit him – Faranth, the pain! A second, he only had to endure a second more, but he couldn't stop or control his own body's reflexes, and the last of it was coming for his neck now, no, not if he moved fast enough, no, no! There was more pain, a slice of agony from shoulder to hip, too much of it now, too much....

 _THE WEYR_ , Trath screamed into his mind, taking them back to the blessed relief of _between_ 's icy silence.

 _Home. Take us home, Trath, please_. F'ren focused desperately on the view of the Weyr's seven spindles that they'd drilled with countless times over the last two decades. Clarity quickly returned to him, but he knew the respite would be brief. _Did we save them? Did I give you enough time? Please, please...._

 _You did, F'ren. I got it all, the whole clump. There'll be burrows from the other Threads, but nothing they can't manage. Chirrith goes to help them now._ Trath's concern flooded F'ren's mind through their shared bond _. Ready yourself, dear F'ren. I'm with you._

The pain that struck him as they re-emerged above the Weyr was enough to send him right back into the darkness.

 

 

 

 

He dreamed of his first winter in the Weyr. The freezing nights in the weyrling barracks, when even the warmth of Trath asleep beside him wasn't enough. The days when the entire place was rimed in ice, and you could scratch your name in it on the walls and come back a sevenday later and find it still there. Crackdust, floating down haphazardly and dirtying everything left outside. And the days when it wasn't so cold to freeze the Threads to dust, when the Weyr fought, and the weyrlings did what they could to calm their young dragons, while the healers and weyrfolk tended the wounded, and the dying.

He dreamed of the first time he'd seen a man die. The greying face, bloodless. The stench of the cauterising iron. The moment the green dragon's eyes darkened from red right through to black as the man on the ground breathed his last.

He dreamed of Trath, always there, and the promise of togetherness that even death would not shatter.

After that, his dreams were kinder.

 

 

 

 

F'ren woke to the dulled sensation of hands on his back, and the sudden deadening chill of numbweed.

“Easy now, F'ren.”

Trath echoed the healer's words instantly. _Be at ease. You live, as do I. They will mend you for me, and we'll fight again soon._

The hands had stilled, then moved to rest on his uninjured hip and shoulder with enough pressure to warn him not to try to move. “I'm not finished here yet, so you can take your time waking up.”

F'ren cracked open an eye, and blinked at the blank, whitewashed wall. He was lying on his front, with the Healer – was it Tarkan? – somewhere on the other side of the bed. He opened his mouth to try to ask the man how bad the score was, and managed a low groan. His tongue felt thick, dry, and he could still taste the acrid flavour of fellis and yesterday's wine.

_Two days ago, dear F'ren. You've slept a long time._

_Oh?_ He closed his eyes, and tried to make sense of it all. Two days. Two days _ago_ , before _now_. But when was _then_? What had happened?

Trath gently nudged his mind away from his barely coherent memories of their last Threadfall. _Not now. Rest now._

They'd been Wingleaders. Wingleaders again. He had responsibilities, beyond Trath and his own self. “Faw...”

“Fall?” Tarkan said, and sighed. “Can always tell a rider. Yes, F'ren, you were scored in Threadfall. It's over now. Don't worry yourself.”

F'ren tried to move his head, but one of Tarkan's hands stopped him.

“I _will_ have you taped down if you can't hold still. Or we could give you more fellis. I know it's confusing right now, and-”

“How.... How bah?” He closed his eyes, trying to figure out how badly hurt he was behind the numbness of his torso, and quickly gave it up as impossible. But his arm didn't throb too badly, nor his hand. It still seemed to be all there, at least. “Please?”

“Shells, you're probably going to be one of those patients, aren't you? Right. Expect this won't be the last time I tell you all this. Most importantly, you still have both arms, but you're not to go moving them around just yet. You were very lucky with the score on your back. It's deep but narrow across the shoulder, and you won't be able to lift that arm fully for a while, even if you hadn't got it scored as well. The muscle damage _will_ heal in time, provided you take care of it. It crosses the spine, but it's shallow there, and ends well short of your kidney. You'll walk and fight again, and you can thank your dragon for that. Now. I'm keeping the numbweed as light and localised as possible, so let me know right off if anything starts hurting. Otherwise, just keep as still as you can while I work.”

F'ren did as ordered, and it wasn't long before Tarkan had finished reapplying the dressings to his back. The healer rose and walked around the bed, his soft footsteps making scarcely more noise than the rustle of his clothing. F'ren opened his eyes again to see Tarkan seating himself on a stool in front of him, holding out a small glass of wine between hands reddened by the frequent washing demanded by his craft. “Drink this, please.”

“Fellis?”

“Some. Just enough to take the edge off the pain where the numbweed can't reach.”

Aided by the Healer, F'ren sipped the wine, and tried to puzzle out the man's words. He'd not been scored _that_ deeply, and he'd have been told of any internal injuries. _Trath, what's he not telling me?_

_He's doing a good job, F'ren. Do as he asks._

Tarkan set to work unwinding the bandaging on F'ren's arm. “You may not want to watch this,” he said, then went on to explain. “Scores never look good, but yours is wider than most. I had to have an apprentice spend the best part of an hour picking the remnants of your clothes out of the wound, but at least the Thread fattened itself on them rather than you.” Tarkan looked up from his work and across at F'ren. “I'm quite serious. Close your eyes again. I'll tell you all you need to know, and possibly more than you want to hear.”

Trath nudged his mind again, and F'ren closed his eyes. “And I won't see your face to know if there's a problem, will I?”

Tarkan didn't answer for a moment, then said, “Just so.” He pulled away at the last of the bandaging, then gently eased the wads of dressings clear. “There. You'll have a lot of scarring, but the main functions of the arm won't be completely impeded. Luck was on your side again around the elbow joint, and there's no sign of infection along the score itself. I gave you good odds on that, but you never can tell.”

"Tha's good, then.”

"Mmm. We'll leave these to air while I check on your hand. How do you feel? Still woozy?”

“Yeah...a bit. Pretty good, actually.”

“That'll be the fellis working. Well. That _does_ look good.”

“Should I open my eyes again?”

“It looks good from a Healer's perspective, I should say. The damage to your hand was... significant. But it's healing well now, and-”

“How bad?” He could sense Trath's mind in silent, close rapport, soothing him, readying him for the news to come.

“We saved most of it, but Thread took the thumb down to the joint, and damaged the tendons for your forefinger badly enough that there was no sense in keeping it. I'm sorry about that, F'ren. We did what we could, and you'll still have some use out of the remaining fingers.”

The words filtered slowly through the haze in his head, barely making sense at all. How could Thread have taken his thumb when he could still feel it? And then, as the throbbing in his hand and three of his fingers suddenly eased, the healer's earlier comments immediately fell into place. Tarkan was using numbweed on his maimed hand, on every bit of it he had left...and it certainly couldn't reach the finger and thumb he didn't possess any more. Even if he _could_ still feel them. Faranth! Unbidden, an image of Threads crawling over his flesh filled his mind, a horror every dragonrider saw all too often, albeit briefly and usually from a distance. Trath insistently pushed the thought out of his mind, blackening it like the dark of _between_. It could have been worse. The dragon's thought, that, not his own, but he couldn't argue with Trath there. The memories were clearer now, even without reliving them, and oh yes it could, it could have been so very much worse.

_I know. You scared me, F'ren._

_It was the only real choice, aside from letting those idiots get killed. And it worked. I remember now, you told me that it worked._

_It did. And we'll flame Thread again, together. Though never again like_ that!

F'ren opened his eyes, and flicked his gaze down his body to where Tarkan was finishing re-dressing his hand. He'd have some use out of it, would he? How much? And how soon? “How long? Before I can fight again?” And dress, and live, and be _whole_....

 _You're still whole, F'ren. You don't keep your_ self _in your fingers, any more than you do in your hair or your nails or-_

_This is different!_

_Not to me._

The Healer straightened up and tugged his stool a little closer. “Listen to your dragon, man. They won't grow back, you know.”

“No. I know.” How marvellous if they could! Would they grow in all tiny like the clutching fingers of a newborn, or bud like new growth in springtime, or just lengthen day by day like pulling off an invisible glove? _I'm rambling, aren't I?_

Trath's mental tone was wryly amused. _Now? You should have heard yourself yesterday._

_Are you going to tell me?_

_You're going to do what the Healer says to do. Listen to me, and do what he says._

_...listen to you some more?_ F'ren sighed, and tried to remember what he'd actually asked.

_I already told you. Soon enough, we'll be fighting again, and everything else too. I promise. But you can ask the Healer the numbers, if you want._

“Tarkan. How long?”

“Everyone takes an injury like this differently. Your dragon's doing a good job right now, I can tell, but don't think the shock of it won't hit you at some point, sooner or later. You'll need to make adjustments, need to give yourself time to adapt. Mentally, as well as physically. A score like that, when the Threads steal a part of you....” Tarkan broke off and sighed. “Well, we'll deal with your head if and when we need to. See what you and your dragon can manage alone first, while you heal. For the hand itself? Provided it continues to heal well, I'd like you to wait a month before you go _between_ again.”

A month. A whole month, though hopefully he wouldn't spend the whole time flat on his belly. But if he was out of action for that long.... F'ren began to chuckle.

Tarkan frowned down at him. “Laughter's a little idiosyncratic at a time like this. I know I didn't give you _that_ much fellis. So what's so funny?”

He took a deep breath, and stared the Healer in the eyes. “My Wing. Sh'vek can hardly re-shuffle the whole Weyr again, and _someone_ will need to lead them during Fall. D'barn or H'rack....” F'ren couldn't help himself; he started laughing again.

“You shouldn't laugh, F'ren.”

“Ha! Whoever he chooses, they'll hate him for it by the time I'm flying again.”

“You _really_ shouldn't laugh,” Tarkan muttered, but by then it was already too late.

F'ren swore under his breath as the Weyrleader walked into view. How long had he been there? He'd not heard any steps other than Tarkan's. Had the fellis fogged his ears as well as his head?

“I've given M'arsen the job,” Sh'vek said, his face an impassive mask. “Until you're flying again. What's the _absolute_ minimum, Tarkan?”

“Provided the wounds stay free of infection...twelve days.”

Sh'vek nodded. “We can but hope. Once you're healed enough to go _between_ , you'll be back in charge of Snowfall, F'ren.”

Twelve days? How could he possibly fight effectively as soon as that? He glanced across at Tarkan, hoping for a sign of some support, but Tarkan refused to meet his gaze, instead ducking down to gather up the discarded bandaging.

“Try not to move, F'ren,” the healer said as he straightened up again. “Someone will be in to check on you again a little later. Weyrleader, I'll be in the next room.”

“Twelve days,” F'ren repeated while Tarkan scurried out of sight, as much to win himself time to think clearly as to emphasise the idiocy of the rush. “And when Trath's flame runs low? I'm running out of hands, _Weyrleader_.”

“Then use someone else's,” Sh'vek snapped. “J'an let Zallackuth overfly himself. He can catch and toss firestone for you at least until Turnover. If you still need assistance after that...well, chances are, there'll be other riders from your Wing grounded while their dragons recover from injury.”

“How thoughtful of you.” F'ren almost had to bite his tongue to stop himself speaking. It would be too easy, in this state, to make a mistake. Best to stick to questions, facts, things he _needed_ to know. “D'barn took charge the other day? How did they fare?”

“No-one _else_ died. Or tried to wrestle Thread to the ground, for that matter. I'm more concerned with the first half of the fall. Report.”

So, no escape that way. F'ren wondered idly if he had anything at all to say that would suit his Weyrleader's ears, but Sh'vek said nothing more, and let the silence linger. An old trick, but the onus was still on F'ren to fill it, and both men knew it.

“I stand by what I told you before Fall,” F'ren began. “You know full well why I changed our formation. And you know _exactly_ what I have to work with, with Snowfall.”

Sh'vek folded his arms. “I know that there are a lot of good men who've been complaining of you.”

“Huh.” Why else would they be in his Wing, if not to report badly of him? “Of course they are. But hey, at least it's not the whole Wing. Though the others...fah! Makes me nostalgic for Cloudburst, it does. At least they _listened.”_

_Best not to ramble, F'ren. Start with Bennedth._

“Bennedth, yes. Bennedth. Given my choice, I'd tell the Weyr it was just a faulty visual, but that wouldn't fool anyone that actually knew T'shell. He'd had enough of living. The other injuries were minor...that I know of. As for the Fall itself, we let a lot of Thread through the first rank, but D'barn did a good job tidying up behind us. The Wing did well enough, under the circumstances.”

“And was there anyone you think is particularly deserving of praise?”

F'ren paused, and thought the question over. There had been, of course, but who was best served by an honest answer? He could easily lose half his best pairs before Turnover, but it didn't seem right to deny them a chance at a safer Wing. Though what of the Holds and Halls the Weyr protected? _They_ needed a wholly effective Wing in Snowfall as much as F'ren did himself. No, it wouldn't be fighting skills that would determine who he lost, but rather their loyalties, and it was far too early to count on anything there. So, that left him with the truthful answer. “St'larna and Lirroth. And Sk'barn's a _very_ sharp lad. Had a nasty scare when T'forgil lost his wits, but the lad recovered well, damn well.”

“Hmm. T'forgil. A genuinely faulty visual, as far as I understand it. Still, when one drills a particular formation for three days straight....” Sh'vek left the sentence hanging pointedly.

“With respect, sir, Farlath-”

Sh'vek interrupted him. “F'ren. Stop. I'm _well_ aware of who is and isn't in your Wing – and so are you. Don't you dare try to shirk responsibility for your man's mistake. The true fault rests with _your_ leadership.”

F'ren glared blankly at the wall. “So. My Wing, my responsibility.” But two could play at that game, just as easily as one. “Were there many burrows – Weyrleader?”

“Oh, yes.” The Weyrleader's tone was moderate, with just the slightest hint of pique. “We attributed half of them to Snowfall alone. The usual penalties will apply.”

“Less than you expected of us, was it?”

“Initially.”

And there was yet another reason for the Weyrleader to be annoyed with him. F'ren's changes to their formation had surely saved more acres than they'd lost, not that Sh'vek would ever admit to it in public. F'ren sighed, and resumed his report. Stringing the memories together was becoming a little easier now, and he could feel Trath's help there. “P'lok lost his nerve after T'forgil's mistake. I sent him and T'forgil to tidy up the swathe that got through; thought it'd give him space to pull himself together again. There was nothing obviously problematic, nothing they didn't have time and space enough to deal with, but Trath could tell something wasn't right when they came back.” That memory was all too clear, and he shuddered.

“Go on.”

“It was a nasty clump, I'll give him that.” F'ren took a breath, and mentally leaned on his dragon for support. “By the time we got to it, the thermals coming off the fireheights had it twisted up even worse. There were other Threads falling with it, and no easy way to get in close. The groundcrew... P'lok left it to them, and they were stupid enough to try to take it on _before_ it burrowed. Idiot Holders. We saw a way, though...couldn't just leave them to die.”

“Did you _know_ who was out there?”

He remembered not to shake his head just in time. “No. I know I'd like to teach them a thing or two. Rahnis is good at shrieking at people; perhaps she's already done the honours for me.”

The Weyrleader watched him thoughtfully for a few moments, then counted off on his fingers, making a point of flexing all five of them in clear sight. “Rethall. Fallbren. Sandroman. Chen. Ingon.”

Sons of the Lord Holder, a nephew, and two overbred fosterlings from Fort. F'ren winced. There was no chance he could get away with yelling at _those_ deadglows, then.

But Sh'vek hadn't finished. He dropped his voice to almost a hiss, and said, “Lady Bretalla has commissioned a fardling ballad. How do you like that?”

Ah. F'ren closed his eyes, wishing he'd never bothered waking up. “I'd rather have the rest of my hand back.”

“Twelve days, F'ren. You have twelve days.”

 


	9. Chapter 9

_Betwixt the sea and the beach-plum grove_   
_they watched the sailors step the mast_   
_and the broken ship was once more whole_   
_and fit to sail the oceans vast_   
_And he watched with his heart fair torn in two_   
_'tween the lass he loved and the dreams he had_   
_For her heart-shaped face and eyes of blue_   
_had no place in the life he dreamed to have._

_Betwixt the sea and the beach-plum grove_   
_he bade her set her baskets down_   
_for their one night left, to be his love_   
_before he sailed the oceans vast._   
_And he loved with his heart fair torn in two_   
_with the lass whose spirit soared with his_   
_But her heart-shaped face and eyes of blue_   
_were no match for the dreams he hoped to live_

_Betwixt the sea and the beach-plum grove_   
_her clothes lay scattered on the sand_   
_her hair lay shorn upon his breast_   
_as he gazed at the empty ocean vast_   
_And he wept with his heart fair torn in two_   
_by a lass who'd had dreams of her own._   
_Now her heart-shaped face and eyes of blue_   
_sail the oceans and his dreams alone._

 

**Mid afternoon, 12.12.34**

**Ista Seahold**

The rusted shutter opened with a whine of metal scraping metal, flooding the chandlery with light and a rush of hot, smelly air. “Tha's better,” said Dascan, the ranking Master Captain of Ista Island's Seacrafters, as he turned back to table. “You'll unnerstand better now you can see, eh, Weyrleader?”

As far as M'ton was concerned, all Dascan had achieved was to _worsen_ the contrast between the shadowed room and the light that had already been streaming through the cracks in the shutter. But, if it meant the Masterfisher would finish his explanation any quicker, he decided it was a small price to pay.

Dascan pulled a stub of chalk from behind his ear and paced the length of the table, tracing a series of undulating lines down the painted length of Ista's coast. “Here. See?” He cross-hatched the lines on either side of High Palisades Island, adding some figures that M'ton supposed were meaningful to sailors.

 _Don't ask me,_ Narnoth said sleepily.

 _Shh, I'm trying to concentrate. It's not easy in this wher-pit. My head's been pounding ever since I arrived._ M'ton licked the sweat off his upper lip and cleared his throat, wishing he had something better to wet it with than the wine he'd been given earlier. He'd have preferred a mug of the weak ale that Dascan was drinking, but apparently only Benden White would do for Weyrleaders. The glass he'd been given was dry and overly acid, and the wineskin fraudulently stamped with Benden's mark – either that, or it had been left half-drunk on a shelf since the last time N'essen had ventured that far into the Seahold – but whatever its origins, it wasn't fit for pickling, let alone drinking. M'ton had surreptitiously poured it into a water dish left out for the Seahold's felines while Dascan's back had been turned, but he was starting to wish he'd simply traded the one for the other.

He frowned down at the Seacrafter's markings, trying to place the sense of them in amidst what he'd already been told. _Fardling seacrafters! I'd like to see him making as much sense of a Threadfall chart as he expects me to do from all these scribblings._

 _Rahnis might know,_ Narnoth suggested. _I could show Alaireth what you're seeing. Or Carth. The Weyrwoman was Seacraftbred._

_She was?_

_Yes. Carth told me before we left._

_Well, likely they'd both understand this mess then, but they're not here and I'm not going to sharding prove either one of them right about being out of my depth._ He blinked as inspiration struck.“Those are the times of high water, in each location?”

“Aye,” said Dascan. “Tide's on t'ebb when Thread passes High Palisades and t'fleet'll not have time t'reach any fish worth having if we don' head out before Thread drops. See?” He swung his arm wide to scribe a short arc across the coastline a little way south of the Weyr.

The meaning of the new mark eluded him, but as far as M'ton could tell, there was still plenty of time for the bulk of the Istan fleet to sail safely from the Seahold out to the path of the Fall and back again, if not as far west as the Master seemed to prefer. “What's wrong with this area?” he asked, prodding a spot east of the Off Islands with his finger. “You won't have so far to sail. If the tide doesn't turn until Thread's falling on Palisades, it'll be high enough to get you over the reefs. And the wind'll be right at this time of the turn to get your larger hulls up there, won't it?”

“Wind'll be right, he says,” Dascan muttered under his breath. “Aye, an' if we sailed the skies like dragons, likely it would be enough an' all.” He rapped his gnarled fingers on the table top. “Boy! Tell the Weyrleader wha's wrong with that'un.”

The dark-skinned lad who'd served M'ton his wine tumbled down from his perch atop the barrel in the corner, dislodging a pair of felines from his lap in the process. One of them scuttled across to the water bowl, lapped up a mouthful and then yowled and made a running leap for the nearest shelf, while the other slunk silently away through the doorway. The boy himself approached the table cautiously. “Master! I...uh.... Do we need more wine? I can fetch another skin....”

M'ton hastily concealed his empty glass behind a coil of rope, feeling a tickle of amusement reach him from his dragon. _Poor mangy thing! It's all right for you, Narnoth, you didn't have to drink any of it out of politeness._

“Not listenin', were ya boy?” Dascan muttered at the lad. “Dreamin' of fire lizards, eh? Or was it dragons this time?”

Feeling more than a little sorry for the boy, M'ton went to his rescue. “I was asking Master Dascan why the fleet can't sail out this way instead, as soon as the Fall's over. Here, between the Weyr and High Palisades Island. Thread'll be falling there, too, so you'll have plenty of fish.”

Judging by the look the young boy gave him, he might as well have suggested they sailed right through the thickest part of it.

“But tha's a _stupid_ idea!” the boy said, looking up at his Master for confirmation.

Dascan nodded. “Answer t'Weyrleader's question lad. Sharpish, now. Tide's still waiting.”

“The current'll be all wrong at tha' tide, and t'fish won't bite, not there. Best fishin's in the cold waters, where it deepens sou-west of Off Island.” He jabbed his finger down on nearly the same spot that the Master Fisherman had favoured; an impressive feat, given the noisy snores M'ton had heard from his direction only a few minutes earlier. “Fish won' swim so far to eat Thread, not when it's falling here, too. They're not half as smart as _most_ people, but they're not stupid!”

The Masterfisherman swatted the boy across the head. “Manners, laddie. More important, you forgot to correct for longitude. Tell your Master 'e needs t' set you those lessons again. Now, Weyrleader....” Dascan turned his attention back to M'ton, and bared his lips in an almost toothless grin. “I'm guessin' you'll jus' have ta take my word on it. _Here's_ where t'fleet'll be waiting,” he said, stabbing the waters south of Palisades Island, just barely outside the likely path of the coming Fall, “and _here's_ where we'll be fishin' with the larger boats.” He dragged his finger across to the same patch of open water he'd indicated earlier. “So don' you flame no Threads where you should'na!”

“Can't you-”

“We'll lose too much time tacking past t'reefs if we sail in any other way,” Dascan interrupted. “Has t' be done this way, if we're to make this catch.”

M'ton gave a heavy sigh. The Masterfisherman's idea would have been all very well if the Threads were falling over salt water alone, but the coming Fall wasn't going to be anywhere near as accommodating as that. The waters around High Palisades and the other Off Islands were rich, particularly so around the reefs that stretched out from the smaller, barren islets to the south of the archipelago. The islets themselves had little to offer except shelter, and the Palisades holdfolk had recently set up a number of temporary cotholds in half a dozen of the sea caves while they harvested the reef flora. If Dascan were to have his way, the Weyr would be stuck with darting in and out several times over the course of the Fall, protecting one small community after another, and leaving the intervening swathes of unprotected sea to reap the only profit that Thread ever gave. “A compromise is the best I can do, Master Dascan. I'll send a messenger to the Palisades group; warn them that they'll probably lose the harvest on the most westerly reefs, and that they'll need to steer their people clear of it. But we _will_ cover the southern spur here. The fish'll have to go hungry.”

“Ah, well. Likely we'll wish we could fill our holds twice over!” said Dascan with a chuckle. “T'will be a good 'un, Weyrleader.”

M'ton's eyes narrowed. If that was the case, why couldn't he have just fished closer to home? “I hope the Weyr will be able to say the same.”

“We'll tithe t'best of it Weyrwards, Weyrleader,” the Masterfisherman added hastily, but there was no mistaking the look of greedy calculation in his eyes.

M'ton was glad to bid the man farewell and get back to Narnoth. The so-called fresh air of the docks stank almost as heavily as the chandlery where he'd spoken to Dascan, but at least outside the occasional gasp of a breeze lifted the stifling humidity away from a man's skin every once in a while. Not that he had much skin bared to the air to be relieved, dressed head to toe in wherhide; he'd seen no reason to remove his coat, not for a visit that shouldn't have taken more than the time it took to boil an egg. _Shard it, this was supposed to be a courtesy call!_ He didn't think that Vallenka would have stayed trapped inside for longer than a few minutes, nor that she would have agreed to alter the Weyr's formal coverage of an Off Islands Fall.

 _We could still flame every Thread that falls,_ Narnoth mused. _I don't trust_ fish _to eat them all, not so close to those islands._

 _There's nothing there for Thread to eat anyway, provided Palisades gets their people clear. The sea'll drown whatever doesn't starve. And we'll get the best of the Seacrafters' catch, Dascan promises._ M'ton set his hand against his dragon's flank, and imagined what Rahnis would have said to that news. _I made a bad bargain back there, I think. We may get the best, Narnoth, but his ships will see far more profit from the excess they catch than they'll lose from the pittance they send to us._

Narnoth raised his foreleg and boosted M'ton towards the uppermost grab-hold on the dragon's straps. _It will pay off in the Weyr's favour eventually, I'm sure. And you don't like fish anyway. Palisades again, next?_

 _I suppose it_ does _have to be us, now I've had to change my mind about how many of those smaller islands we'll be protecting. But home first. I need a new shirt._

 _And the people heading for the little islands? Who shall we send to speak to them?_ Narnoth asked once he was airborne.

M'ton closed his eyes and leaned back against his dragon's neck ridge, enjoying the rush of air across his face. _Hahnth and V'ray are rostered for messages today, aren't they? No, make that L'daff and Rolpoth, with that young blue from his Wing. Some of those caves are hard to find, and G'canas knows the area well._ Holding his visual of the Weyr firmly in mind, M'ton prompted Narnoth to take them _between._

 _Rolpoth said L'daff had a drill planned_ , Narnoth said when they re-emerged, _and he asks if messages will always be delegated elsewhere when one of our Wing stands duty._

 _I'll be missing our drills, too, at the rate today's going,_ M'ton grumbled _. K'mallo, maybe?_

Narnoth snorted. _I told Rolpoth to trade tasks with Hahnth if he'd rather not go. And Carth says the Weyrwoman wishes to speak to you._ The dragon's thoughts took on an almost wheedling tone. _We've no need to leave for Palisades right away...._

Vallenka was waiting for them beside Carth on the queen's ledge. She silently handed him a large glass of iced and sweetened citrus juice as soon as his feet were back on the ground. M'ton managed to gulp down well over half of it before he remembered his manners. “Thank you, Vallenka.” The Weyrwoman had proved far easier to get along with than he'd expected on the basis of Rahnis' warnings. He'd always known that Vallenka was a firm woman, but the kindness she'd shown towards him since the flight had come as quite a surprise.

“You're welcome,” Vallenka said. “And my thanks to your dragon; Carth _does_ appreciate a properly attentive bronze.”

M'ton didn't look round; he already knew what he'd see, and it was faintly embarrassing: Narnoth's devotion to his mate bordered on the ridiculous. He quickly took another swallow of juice; it might be sweeter than he liked, but it was doing an excellent job of soothing his aching head. “Delicious. How did you know?”

“Some things never change.” She folded her arms and leaned back against the rockface, then squinted up at the sky, clearly checking the position of the sun. “And some things do that never should. I expected you back well before now.”

M'ton shrugged. “Couldn't be helped. Perhaps you could go, next time? Narnoth told me you were Seacraftbred. I never knew that.”

“Why in Faranth's name _would_ you?” the Weyrwoman asked with a cheery laugh.

The question gave him pause. Why _should_ he need to know the countless little details of the Weyrwoman's life. Their relationship was limited to the shared fulfilment of their duties and whatever else their dragons demanded of them, nothing further than that. It certainly wasn't a relationship of equals, as he'd had with Rahnis. The realisation brought with it a sharp pang of regret.

 _Don't be silly_ , Narnoth said. _I had to learn how to fly and flame, and you had to learn how to be a dragonrider. We may never match her experience, but we shall learn, and soon earn the Weyr's respect._

 _I thought we already had it. “_ It might have been useful sending a Seacrafter today,” M'ton told Vallenka. He stopped himself, just short of saying that Dascan might not have questioned the Weyr's thread coverage, had she been there instead of him.

Vallenka shook her head. “No, the Seacraft and I parted ways a very long time ago. What kept you?”

“Master Dascan's sending the fishing fleet out ahead of the next Istan Fall, and we'll need to adjust our coverage accordingly,” he explained.

“How so?”

“Mmm,” he said through another mouthful of juice, not entirely certain that the Weyrwoman was asking for clarification alone. But it _had_ been the right choice to make. “We'll be covering the boats, but leaving some live threads to draw up the fish.”

“Which side of the islands?”

“West. But the fighting time works out more or less the same for the Weyr,” he added hastily, recognising the doubtful look on Vallenka's face. “Perhaps even a little in our favour, provided we don't overshoot.” That could be easily done; no dragon liked leaving threads to fall unchallenged, least of all so close to home, and he could understand Vallenka's concerns. That said, he really didn't think the challenge of leading the Weyr through a Fall like that was beyond his ability; it was the _rest_ of the job that was throwing up problems. “Anyway, I'm off to Palisades as soon as I've changed shirts, to let them know which of the reefs around the Off Islands we'll be protecting, and which ones we won't.”

The Weyrwoman tapped her chin with fingers. “ _Don't_ let them change your mind again; a Weyrleader must always act decisively. But before you go, I'd like a word with you about yesterday's Fall. Shall we go inside?”

She led him into his new quarters and paused beside his desk, eyeing the stack of documents that he still hadn't had time to deal with. “I can have N'essen help you with some of these, if you like.”

That was the last thing he needed. N'essen's Trioth might still be grounded, but that hadn't stopped the former Weyrleader from interfering and advising at any given opportunity. M'ton grabbed the whole pile – performance reports from each of the Weyr's Wings, the ongoing discipline problem in old T'ten's Wing, potential placements for the senior weyrlings, the sweepride rota he was working on for the coming month, letters of condolence left over from N'essen's tenure and several dozen other things – and stuffed them onto a high shelf. “That won't be necessary. I just need to find the time to work on them. Tonight, hopefully. Mind if I get changed while we talk?”

She did him the courtesy of looking away as soon as he started peeling off his clothes. Strangely, the more layers he removed, the more at ease with her he felt. The Weyrwoman's constant scrutiny could be discomfiting at times, but he supposed it would ease off soon enough, once he was more settled into his role as Weyrleader. “Ista's dragons flew well yesterday,” he said.

“ _Some_ of them,” Vallenka said. “I hear you flew the full fall?”

M'ton shrugged. “Why rouse the whole Weyr for one hour when three Wings can do the same share of the flaming in four?”

“Better than letting Igen fly it, I suppose.”

“Exactly! Nerat may not be fully in our remit yet, but does it really matter which threads we flame? Benden were very grateful for our assistance, and I didn't hear any complaints from the riders we left behind, not with the Keroon Gather to entertain them.”

Vallenka made a disapproving noise. “Your absence was noted, M'ton. Except for the High Reaches, everyone else was there. Even Weyrleader A'barlo of Benden.”

“Thread was falling,” he said, pulling a fresh shirt over his head. “One of us had to be there, fighting.”

“Thread was falling over Nerat Hold. Keroon looks to _us_.”

“And don't we want Nerat to do the same? Don't we want our riders familiarised with fighting thread over the peninsula? Keroon had you and half the Weyr to grace their Gather; that ought to have been more than good enough for them!”

“Familiarising our riders with the Nerat terrain is hardly a priority right now.”

“Well, they did a sharding good job of it. Other than char-burns, our Wings suffered no injuries at all. Pathya was very impressed by Wissa's performance flying with Benden's Queens' Wing. L'daff's Wing had a minor incident with Bend-”

Vallenka interrupted him. “I _have_ read your report, M'ton.”

Pulling his chair out from the desk, M'ton straddled it, then started tying the laces of his shirt. If Vallenka had already seen his report, he really couldn't understand why she still wanted to discuss it with him. “Ista's dragons flew well, Weyrwoman, and as far as I'm concerned, we should've been flying long Falls with Benden – and Igen too, really – right from the start of the Pass, as well as trading them completely when and where it makes sense. That's what we'll be doing from now on.”

“And did leaving the Half Circle Fall to Igen make sense?”

M'ton winced. “Yes, it did.” Very early morning Falls in the east were more favourable for Igen than Ista, and he'd happily accepted Weyrleader R'loe's offer to take them on. Unfortunately, Igen's Wings had failed to fully cover the salt-marshes north of the Seahold, and a single burrowing thread had claimed an entire low-lying field within minutes of the tide going out. “The burrow was an unfortunate mishap, but it could have happened to any Weyr. Igen's dragons flame just as well as any other Weyr's, and it's sheer prejudice to believe otherwise.”

“Oh, really? You've tallied the records, have you?”

“Have you?” he shot back at her, genuinely curious.

“Igen's dragons are small, slow, and they'd be short of bronzes even _without_ being preponderantly green,” she said, smiling smugly.

That didn't necessarily mean much in Threadfall. “Well then,” M'ton said, “that's their problem, if they choose to see it that way.” He wouldn't have done so himself: a small, agile green might not flame as many threads as a bronze did, but a bronze would be hard pressed to match her in flaming the ones she did destroy. Besides, Igen would have their fighting numbers up to full strength again well within the next handful of turns, breaking Ankala's unlucky legacy once and for all. “How _this_ Weyr fights Thread is my decision to make.”

“I'm not questioning your decision to send our Wings to fight yesterday, M'ton, nor your right to make it.”

That hadn't kept half of the other ranking riders in the Weyr from offering their opinions, but his choices had all been proved right so far. “Good,” he said, crossing his arms.

“You _are_ Weyrleader,” she added.

He was starting to get sick of hearing that from her; a good Weyrleader shouldn't need the reminder. “You still disagree, don't you? You don't think the extra Keroon Falls we're flying for Igen are worth it?”

Vallenka rolled her eyes. “For the usual hunting rights on the plains? We've marks enough to buy excess stock when we need it. Which we don't. Besides, I've seen the charts, and for every Fall of theirs we take on, they take two of ours.”

Perhaps he _should_ have told Vallenka about the agreement in principle he'd reached with Weyrleader R'loe of Igen during his first sevenday as Weyrleader, instead of waiting until the deal was finalised. “Short ones. It all adds up in the end.”

“Not where it counts, with the Holders,” said Vallenka. She gave him a long, hard look. “They only remember how _often_ it falls, not for how long. What kind of impression do you think you gave Pern yesterday? Or your Weyr?”

He matched her stare for stare. “We fought sharding well, and not a single thread escaped us.”

“So I heard from Weyrleader A'barlo, after his Wingsecond reported in. D'bew was _full_ of praise for you.”

M'ton spread his arms wide. “What then, Weywoman, is the problem?”

“You, Ista's _Weyrleader,_ fought under a Benden Wingsecond's command. You could have easily let L'daff take charge of those Wings yesterday, or else why appoint him as your Second in the first place?”

In a few months' time, he might have done just that, but it was too late to change that now.

“Yes, you fought well,” Vallenka went on, “but you can't impress Holders by how well you flame Threads when they're all locked behind their walls and shutters. Except for Lord Lomer, who was at Keroon Hold with everyone else. Where I asked _you_ to be. You've not asked me a single thing about the Gather, you know!”

The criticism stung. M'ton _knew_ he was a better Wingleader than N'essen had been, likely better than K'mallo as well, and close to being on a par with L'daff. Vallenka had praised his fighting abilities too, and if he hadn't quite earned her full respect in his other areas of responsibility, he wouldn't do so wasting time at Gathers. Without even thinking about it, he told her as much.

“Faranth help you,” Vallenka swore, “because you seem to be doing everything you can not to take the help _I'm_ trying to give you. I know you didn't seek out your knots as eagerly as some bronzeriders do, but I've _never_ seen a man undermine his own authority as thoroughly as that before! You've the makings of a good Weyrleader, M'ton. Don't let your regrets over Rahnis cloud your ability to do the duties your Narnoth earned for you!”

 _That_ stung even harder. Sending Rahnis north ought to have made both their lives easier, but all he'd got back from her had been resentment over his agreement with Vallenka's decision to transfer her, and a whole mess of unfounded worries that might have scorched his relationship with the Weyrwoman permanently. Rahnis had been right about one thing though: as much as he wished he could make things right again, he really _didn't_ have time to spare for her. Finding enough time in the day to tend to Narnoth was hard enough, but even that didn't come at the expense of doing his utmost for the Weyr, where it mattered. That didn't include Gathers, as far as he was concerned. “So what happened at the Gather then, Vallenka? Were the Harpers any good? Were the Holder ladies offended by my absence from the dances?”

Vallenka rose from her chair and went to his shelves, and pulled down the pile of hides from where he'd stowed them. She set the top half dozen aside, then passed him one written in her own hand. “My report, Weyrleader,” she said. “I suggest you read it.”

M'ton skimmed the first few paragraphs, and soon found the meat of what had had Vallenka so concerned. Keroon's Gathers were famous for their runner-trading, and yesterday's had been no exception, neither in actual animals nor in their metaphorical counterparts. Having gifted Benden a share of Igen's hunting rights on the Keroon plains, Weyrleader R'loe of Igen had subsequently made full use of A'barlo's good will. The pair had spent the best part of the afternoon drinking Benden wine – the best vintages, no doubt, not the swill the Seahold had in its cellars – with Lord Lomer of Nerat. According to Vallenka, the pair had almost convinced Nerat's Lord that the falls Ista had recently traded to Igen were a sign that the island Weyr wasn't up to taking on full protection of the southern half of the peninsula. A ridiculous assertion, but Lomer was no dragonrider, and the Lord had been equally blind to the realities when Igen had assured him that they'd ask a far smaller tithe in return for their protection than any Weyr could realistically afford at that stage of a Pass. If it hadn't been for Igen's recent performance over Half Circle Seahold, Vallenka thought that Lomer might easily have made a deal then and there – a deal which was a very long way from the one that M'ton had thought he'd already made.

“Shard it!” he swore, slamming the hide down on the table with a thump of his fist. “For a half-tithe from Nerat? It doesn't even make _sense_!”

“It's not the tithes they're angling for, M'ton,” Vallenka said. “They'll need to increase their numbers by another fifty dragons at least, and that means a breeding queen.”

Igen had been in desperate need of a queen who could clutch decently for _turns_ , regardless of how many lengths of land they protected. “They were getting Minith and a Wing from us anyway, _and_ the full tithe for Keroon. What's R'loe _thinking_?”

Vallenka's eyes widened. “ _Minith and a Wing?_ ” she repeated slowly.

It wasn't how he'd planned on breaking the news to her, but M'ton supposed it was just as good as the alternative, especially after R'loe had acted so strangely at the Gather. Perhaps Weyrwoman Irdana was the problem...or maybe R'loe himself. “It's the obvious solution, Vallenka. I can't imagine why N'essen didn't think of it himself. Ista's a wealthy Weyr, in marks, tithes, _and_ dragons. Almost every threadfall we fight is interrupted by ocean, and those that aren't we share with other Weyrs often enough anyway. The northern Weyrs need to fly their greens and blues in shifts, but for us, it's pointless. We don't _need_ the same population as Fort or Benden or the High Reaches. Igen protects far more of Keroon's acreage than we do, and we can easily afford to cede Keroon Hold's tithe to them, especially with Nerat to make up the difference. They flame more than enough Thread to earn it!”

The Weyrwoman crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. “Holds and tithes I'd understand – even a Wing, if we were suitably recompensed for it – but Igen have done _nothing_ to earn any queen daughter of Carth's, not after what happened to Leyanath!”

The Pass had still been several turns away when three of Igen's queens, including the first gold clutched by Carth at Ista, had fought. The incident – which many said was yet another example of all the ill-luck left behind by Weyrwoman Ankala – had left Leyanath dead, her daughter Vedrealth flightless and Arafth crippled. M'ton himself had been a nursing babe in the Lower Caverns when it had all happened. But as tragic as the event had been, it _had_ happened a very long time ago. “Hasn't Igen suffered enough because of it?” he asked.

Vallenka's lips tightened, and she looked away.

M'ton sighed, and set about trying to convince the Weyrwoman. “How many eggs have Igen's queens clutched between them in the last turn? Twenty, from four golds? I know you want Serreni to succeed you eventually, but R'loe said Weyrwoman Irdana would step aside for Serreni this very turn, if we send her to them. That's likely the issue – Irdana's probably reluctant to let go, or maybe R'loe's worried about his Mnath's ability to keep up with a younger queen. Last time I spoke to him, R'loe agreed we'd be getting two golds transferred back to us in return. Trikinth _and_ Vedrealth.” He fumbled for the phrasing that Rahnis had once used. “The more queens living at Ista, the more the size of the junior clutches will be suppressed. I know you'll miss Serreni's assistance in running the Weyr, but Vedrealth's Xia's as good as any Headwoman.”

“Really,” Vallenka muttered. At length, she spoke again, clearly more than a little peeved with him. “That's all very well, but it's customary for a Weyrleader to consult with his Weyrwoman over transfers, even during a Pass. And as for giving up an entire Hold's tithe!”

“And gaining Nerat, remember! Threadfall coverage-”

“Thread may be falling, M'ton, but you've still overstepped.”

“I know, and I'm sorry I didn't mention it sooner,” he said, smiling apologetically. “But honestly Vallenka, it's to Ista's advantage.”

She stared back at him, long and hard enough that he was on the verge of looking away when she spoke again, her tone grudging. “I suppose it does look that way.”

Faranth, but he'd been starting to worry. “Of course it is! I was hoping to surprise you with it after the next Keroon fall. Impress you, even. Bring you back a contract all ready to sign, and have the whole thing settled by Turnover.”

She arched her brows. “Were you, now?”

He nodded, truly relieved that she'd seen the good sense of the idea. “I knew you'd agree with me, Vallenka. It was a little discourteous of me not to involve you from the start, but if I can't independently act on a good idea, I've no business being Weyrleader. You have said I should be more decisive.”

“More than once,” she said, resting her elbows on the wide arms of her chair. “Remember it, next time you visit the Masterfisherman.”

“You've also advised me to act on good advice, when I hear it,” he added softly.

Vallenka chuckled. “So. You're in a mood to listen to good advice today, I take it? Will you leave setting R'loe and Irdana straight in my hands, M'ton?”

“Of course!” He grinned at her, pleased by the change in her demeanour. She wasn't difficult to bring round to a good idea at all, and her earlier signs of disgruntlement had as good as gone _between._ “Do you think it's Irdana who's the problem? Or R'loe?”

“Oh, I know _exactly_ where the problem lies.” She stood, eyeing the stack of documents lying on the table. “I should get back to my duties. And will you deal with the rest of yours so...capably, M'ton?

He placed his chin in his hands. “I might need to ask N'essen's advice on some of them after all. T'ten's becoming a problem I can't ignore. It's just that there's so _much_ that needs doing, and it all takes so long! With threadfall coming at least every other day, I barely have time to touch it. How did N'essen ever manage it all?”

“Good time management,” she said simply.

As if it were that easy!

Vallenka smiled sympathetically, seeming to read his doubts. “There's a hide in my personal records that I think you'll find quite instructive, M'ton. Will you make time to read it?”

He could hardly refuse her, not after she'd been so gracious about his deal with R'loe, but he doubted he'd learn much that he didn't already know. “If you think it'll help. As soon as I'm back from Palisades, Vallenka, I promise.”

As she left, he nudged Narnoth back to alertness, and ran through the remainder of his list of jobs for the day in his head: Wing drill could still be squeezed in between the evening meal and sunset if he was quick at Palisades, and that would free up time to watch K'mallo's Wing at their own drills before the weyrfolk ate. He could work through some more of his paperwork and decide on which weyrlings to place with K'mallo at the same time.

 _Carth says we mustn't forget to eat,_ Narnoth reminded him. _Oh, and the Weyrwoman reminds us the next firestone levy for Ista is coming in from Fort West Minehold Nine, and you need to settle on how many dragonweights we need by tomorrow._

 _Already?_ M'ton hadn't even started on it; he'd been sure that that one wasn't due for another sevenday. Sighing to himself, he grabbed an offcut of hide and a piece of charcoal from the pot on his desk, and stuffed them into a pocket. Palisades' Seaholder was bound to keep him waiting for a minute or two, and he might be able to make a useful start on the problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a few notes to address some questions/points raised in the reviews over at FFN:  
> * Threadscore & /between/. I took a fair number of medical liberties with F'ren's injury in the previous chapter, basing his treatment on a mixture of burns and cutting injuries. The score on his back is shallow enough that it only intermittently penetrates the dermis, but there's a fair chunk missing from his forearm as well as the obvious damage to the hand. Pern doesn't have the tech for skin grafts, but I imagine they know how to creatively cut, stretch and stitch the adjacent undamaged skin. The initial two weeks post-injury should allow for sufficient healing to take place that the risk of infection is gone and the stitches can come out, but there'll still be a lot of healing to be done beneath the surface. And this is where /between/ comes in. My head-canon is that the cold of /between/ restricts cell-repair/growth and impedes blood-flow: the same processes are a sadly efficient way to cause miscarriages, as I personally know all too well (not via /between/, just badly behaved blood and an immune system that goes on the war-path far too easily - but I got the right drugs and it all ended happily). So, F'ren's arm won't heal as well as it would do if he'd got a couple of months of bed-rest, but going /between/ so soon isn't an instant death sentence.  
> * Frequency of clutches. If you don't want a population explosion, this needs some thought. In this version of Pern, queens may well rise twice a turn in the run-up to a Pass, to boost the numbers in their Weyr, but I see them slackening off once the Weyrs are up to full strength of 400-500 dragons and several queens. The numbers balance out well with each queen producing 25+ eggs once a turn - and that includes the impact of increased casualties in threadfall/weyrling training. On top of that, I'm assuming that more queens in a Weyr will suppress the mating instincts of all of them to some level, injury to queen and/or rider will also suppress the mating instinct, young queens will produce more eggs than old ones, senior queens will rise more often than junior queens and large clutches will be more widely spaced than smaller ones, because of the nutritional drain on the queen's system. Linnebith rises like clockwork in the spring. Kiath is also on a roughly yearly cycle. Alaireth rises closer to every 9/10 months, but only because her clutches have been so small in the past.
> 
> I do love to know what you all think. As always, thanks to those of you who've commented.


	10. Chapter 10

_Holders, tend each furrowed field_   
_through fire, flood and 'fall_   
_Let sun and rain_   
_bring forth the grain_   
_in golden bounty, standing tall._   
_Holders, tend each furrowed field_   
_and tithe the best tenth of the yield._

_Crafters, tend each forge and mill_   
_through fire, flood and 'fall_   
_Keen hands and eyes_   
_your wares devise,_   
_enriching lives far from your Hall._   
_Crafters, tend each forge and mill_   
_and tithe the workings of your skill._

_Weyrmen, tend your dragons bold_   
_through fire, flood and 'fall_   
_The greens and blues,_   
_browns, bronzes too,_   
_and golden queens that spare us all._   
_Weyrmen, tend your dragons bold_   
_and tithe your lives while we grow old._

 

**Mid morning, 15.12.34**

**High Reaches Weyr**

In many respects, life at one Weyr was much like life in any of the others. Moving from Ista to the High Reaches, the obvious and most predictable difference had been the climate. Rahnis had expected to see snow, and plenty of it, throughout the winter. What she was still struggling with was how impossibly varied the fardling stuff was, and how relentlessly it would insist on coating Alaireth's ledge. There were muscles in her lower back that she honestly hadn't known she possessed until they'd made their complaints known to her the day after the first snowfall. She'd listened to M'gan's advice about not clearing the snow before it had finished falling but by the time it _had_ finally stopped, her slippery, trampled path had turned to such a mess of compacted ice that her shovel could barely make a dent in it. Having turned down the offered assistance of three separate bronzeriders, M'gan included, requesting help from weyrlings or drudges was quite simply out of the question. It was a matter of principle almost as much as it was one of pride, and the job hadn't seemed too big at first, even if a queen's ledge was larger than most. She'd watched with considerable envy some of the smaller dragons using the last flames left over from their firestone drill to melt their ledges clear, high above her own weyr. Another advantage of riding a flaming dragon. Runnels of meltwater had trickled down the sheer walls of the Weyr, forming spectacular displays of icicles as they quickly re-froze. Today, with the sun finally out and now risen above the Weyr's rim, the whole place seemed to sparkle. She had to admit, there was a harsh beauty to it.

A shame her own weyr didn't really match up.

Rahnis rested her shovel beside the broom already leaning against the rockface and surveyed her work. Two piles of dirty snow, this time placed where they _wouldn't_ slump down onto unsuspecting weyrfolk passing below. A thin, dry and well-gritted trail for her own feet, surrounded by enough more-or-less clear space for Alaireth to get in and out of the weyr. The queen would be walking on lumpy brown ice rather than rock, but at least her claws would give her sufficient traction, and she wouldn't coat her tail with snow in the process. Not pretty in the least, but it would do. Rahnis ducked back into the weyr to collect an extra layer of knit and her old coat from Alaireth's couch, where she'd left them earlier. The new one was better made – warmer, too – but even after paying H'koll her own marks for his craftmanship, she still didn't feel quite like wearing it. An unexpected expense, but some debts were more costly to bear than others, and far less welcome. Oh, F'ren had made excuses enough for his behaviour the night she'd arrived in the Weyr, but not one of them changed the fact that he'd intentionally chosen to hurt her. He was right that he'd never hurt her like that again, but not for the reason he thought. And the gall of the man, to claim he was doing her a favour by his interference! Favours like that she could do without. Perhaps she'd change her mind – about the coat, not F'ren – when the weather turned colder, as half the Weyr told her it would. Even so, it was hard to believe they weren't merely making the most of their chance to tease a southerner. She knew her fair share of jokes about the northern Weyrs, too – all riders did – but somehow, quips like _Why do riders from the High Reaches take so long going_ between? // _So that they can warm up!_ didn't seem all that funny when your fingers and ears and nose were stinging with the cold already. And still another month and a half to go before Turnover!

Rahnis sighed. She'd always loved the Turnover celebrations in Ista: the feasting, the music, the jokes and most of all, the dancing. Not just the dances she had with M'ton, though she'd miss those most sorely of all, but all the weyrfolk in their finery, dancing together as couples and in groups. The greenriders and their partners making the most of the absence of bigoted Holders and Crafters, everyone delighting in their lives and their loves and the simple fact that they'd lasted another turn. A time to celebrate new beginnings, and by rights, she ought to be one of those doing just that. Why did it have to be so difficult? She'd scarcely had a moment to herself since getting here, and just when she did, when her thoughts turned inevitably south, all she managed to do was tie herself in knots over M'ton. What chance did she ever have of settling in to her new home when half of her heart still lingered at Ista? The separation tore at her, tangling her emotions even more. Nights were the worst, even cocooned in Alaireth's constant tender presence while the dragon slumbered. You couldn't be lonely as a dragonrider, never that...but her bed was far too cold and quiet and empty for her to sleep easily in it. When she did sleep, even her dreams were lonely: more than once, she'd found herself wandering back and forth up the same desolate, wilderness valley of her imagination. She ached for M'ton, desiring his easy company as much as his physical presence. Imagining him there beside her did little to soothe her mind: all the hurt and resentment, the guilt for being too tired and busy to think of him during daylight hours, and when she did have the chance, hating herself for how hard it was, struggling not to fall apart.

  _My dearest Rahnis. I'm here._

 Choking back a sob, Rahnis mentally leaned in to her dragon's offered comfort, and ran the half dozen steps back out onto the ledge. _Oh, Alaireth. I thought I was stronger than this. How can I miss him like this, so much, when I can't even bear to think of him half the time?_

  _I miss Narnoth, too._

_Do you talk to him?_

  _When I can. They have so little time. Much like ourselves. I know M'ton thinks of you, as you do of him-_

 Rahnis tightened her grip on her coat. _Not like I do. He's a better person than me. Can't say I blame him for doing exactly as I asked._

  _Oh Rahnis. You_ need _to see him._

  _He's a Weyrleader now. He doesn't have time for me._ I _don't even have time for me._

 Alaireth's mind quietly, defiantly denied the truth of what her rider had said. Rahnis found her eyes drawn to those of her dragon, high up on the Weyr's rim. Too far to see clearly, but she was held by them all the same.

  _No_ , the dragon said. _But that doesn't matter. Let me talk to Narnoth._

 Rahnis nodded. _Can't make things worse, can it?_

  _Certainly not! I will speak to him later, when Ista Weyr returns from Threadfall._

_Thank you, dearest._

_And now you should eat. You've worked hard. Have one of those sweet rolls you like._

As if it had been listening in, her stomach rumbled. Surely it hadn't been _that_ long since breakfast?

_You barely touched it. You were talking to That Woman from the Lower Caverns._

Rahnis peered over the edge of the ledge, eyeing the entrance to the Lower Caverns. “Well, hopefully she'll be ready to talk some more. Those tithe alterations shouldn't have taken this long to work out.” The Weyr's logistics seemed to be getting worse with time, rather than better. From what Rahnis had been able to make out, a minor discrepancy in the stillroom supplies on the day of Maenida's fateful injury had grown like a burrowing Thread, with new problems appearing in different areas of the Lower Caverns almost daily. The confusion over cloth supplies had worsened even further, there were regular shortfalls of kitchen essentials, and the dragonhealers were continually bemoaning the fact that they'd had to repay Ista for the loan of medicines far sooner than was sensible. The day after she'd arrived, Healer Tarkan had discovered that some enterprising kitchen-worker had filched half his herb supplies and wasted them trying – and failing – to cover up spoiled meat. The tithe goods arriving from High Reaches Hold ought to have been sufficient to fix matters, but even with some judicious back-bartering, the Weyr remained in the embarrassing position of sending riders out with marks almost every other day, to buy more of whatever essential item had just run out.

Fortunately, the tithe from Tillek Hold was due to be collected in the next few days. This far north, the traditional tithe trains became impossible after the first snows of the winter. Threadfall was an ever-present risk, and the larger shelters were too few and far between, especially for a slow-moving caravan hampered by the weather. It would have been a different matter during an Interval, when slower travel times wouldn't matter and work crews could afford to spend sevendays at a stretch clearing isolated stretches of road. A single person wearing snow-slats could still make it through the mountain roads, but it was easier by far to send messages by drum or by firelizard, and for the Weyr to collect its tithes by dragonwing. As well as all the bounty of the ocean and the wine that the Hold was rightly famed for, Tillek's sheltered valleys, warmed by the ocean air, gave the Weyr its last fresh goods for the turn. The dark green sea-bread with its salty tang, oil-cheese, sacks of winter wheat and tubers, sweet-beet, jars of marshberries, the left over wrinklies from Tillek's vineyards, and fish, fish, fish. And it wasn't just food that Tillek supplied: there was also the wool-stock sheared from the Hold's ovines and caprines; cut sea-reeds of all sizes, fit for every use from matting to furniture; oils and hides and metalwork, and every other kind of essential.

The Weyr sorely needed more of almost everything. Rahnis had done what she could to coordinate a full inventory over the past few days, and the results she'd seen so far had been worrying. Supplies were running far lower than they should have been at that time of the turn, and she didn't think that the Weyrfolk were being anywhere near as inefficient or wasteful as the Headwoman claimed. Nor did she believe that dragonriders had been pilfering luxuries. Most of the Lower Caverns workers were making do with what they had rather than making an issue of what they lacked, trusting in the new tithe to solve the problem and stretching their resourcefulness to the limits in the meanwhile. Regardless of everything Egritte had said, the Weyr _would_ need to ask a larger tithe of Tillek and the other Holds that winter, but how much more and what it should comprise was still in doubt.

 _I really ought to go and find Egritte,_ Rahnis mused. _I know she was given the kitchen inventory first thing this morning, and that was the last of them. Doesn't take this long to do the numbers, even if she does have to use her fingers._

_Eat first._

Rahnis grinned, and started down the steps towards the Weyrbowl. _Don't worry, I don't need any more persuading! How is the sunlight, up there?_

 _Weak,_ Alaireth said, wryly amused, _but who knows when we'll see it again?_

_Making the most of chance to do some basking?_

_Hmph. I think I've earned it, after Crom with the weyrlings._

Rahnis winced, and sidestepped a patch of ice lying across her path. Alaireth's frustrations at moderating her pace that morning had been palpable, especially given the unpleasant weather they'd been flying through over Crom. The Weyrlings hadn't liked it much either, but they'd perhaps been more willing to accept it as essential training than Alaireth had. No, that was unfair on Alaireth – Rahnis had been equally impatient to return, and in a worse mood besides. Small wonder the queen had picked up on it. _Of course you've earned it. The next flight will be better, with just Ormaith for company; you'll be able to stretch your wings properly even if the sun hides away again. Enjoy it for me while it's here._

Up on the rim, Alaireth fanned her wings open and re-settled them to better catch the light – and the eyes of the dragons sunning themselves beside her. _I'll have you know, I've been doing more up here than merely-_

 _Basking is basking, whether it's in sunlight or good company,_ Rahnis interjected. _Don't think my eyes are so poor I can't see all those bronzes on the rim._

High above, the dragon gave a snort of disdain. _I can't say I'm terribly impressed. They boast and jostle and preen, as bronzes do, but why should I believe one over another? They go on so much that it does become hard to_ listen _at times. Besides, they won't prove themselves to me with words. Hollow boasts, for a hollow Weyr._

_Hollow?_

Alaireth fell into a thoughtful silence. _I'm not sure I can explain it. They circle each other in all their petty ambitions and you were right, there's only really one true faction here. It feels senseless and pointless, like a stagnating rock-pool, with all that's alive and vital drying up and draining away. That's how it feels to me. And it's not just the bronzes, but the other dragons as well._

_Sh'vek mentioned...do you remember what he told me? Kiath spends so much of herself on Maenida, and Linnebith holds herself aloof for Delene's sake, as far as I can tell. Is it their absence you're feeling? The guidance and support a Weyr needs from its queens?_

_It's more than that. They need us here, and I understand that now better than I did before. But I still think there's_ more.

Rahnis could feel the determination in Alaireth's mind as she pushed open the door and stepped into the shadows of the Weyr's dining hall. The tables and benches were all stacked and scrubbed, but across the room a kettle of klah and the remains of the breakfast rolls still lingered on the service counter. She slung her coat onto the nearest peg, and started across the room. _You're never cared much for Weyr politics before, but I'll help you with this however I can._

 _This isn't politics_ , the dragon chided. _Riders always make more trouble there, and riders can char it themselves. Oh, I don't know. I'll show you what I mean, next time I feel it strongly. Perhaps together we can understand this place better._

_We'll get there, I promise. Sooner or later._

Rahnis ladled out a large mug of luke-warm klah and helped herself to a pair of meatrolls. She was too late for sweetrolls – only crumbs and a few lost pieces of fruit filling remained on the second platter. Drinking as she went, she carried on through the side entrance into the Weyr's main living cavern. A few small groups of Weyrfolk and riders were gathered around the three of the six Crom-coal stoves which were lit, but aside from them the cavern was empty. The Weyrfolk rarely remained indoors when the winter sun was out; there were too few hours of it each day as it was. Recognising one of the women sitting with her back to her, Rahnis headed for the group surrounding the stove closest to the main passage leading back out to the Weyrbowl. Of the many people she'd already got to know among the High Reaches Lower Caverns, Quaiya was possibly her favourite. The old auntie had charge of supervising a number of the Weyr's many young children, whenever they weren't with their foster parents or off doing chores. A good dozen or so of them sat on plump cushions scattered on the floor around her, ranging in age from no more than a handful of Turns up to one girl old enough to be apprenticing as a creche-worker herself. Two other women were sitting with the group, as well as a pair of greenriders busily wielding knitting needles. The younger children were gathered around the beginnings of a rag rug, while the older ones were occupied either knitting or mending clothing, all of them softly singing one of the more harmonic memory-songs while they worked. A feline nestled in amongst the cloth scraps added its own rumbling percussive accompaniment, while one of the younger children stroked it.

“Good morning, Quaiya," Rahnis said. "May I join you?”

The old auntie looked up from her own knitting. “Why, Rahnis. Of course you may. F'lyn and O'kash here are helping the youngsters learn the feather-pattern. What better time for you to start, eh?”

Balancing her plate on top of her mug, Rahnis pulled a folding stool out from the nearby stack, jiggled it open with one hand, and sat down opposite Quaiya. “I can't stop long, much as I'd like to.”

“You can't avoid picking up some needles forever, girl,” the old woman said, waving hers around pointedly, “not if you're going to stick around with us up in the Reaches.”

Rahnis took a bite of her food, and washed it down with a gulp of klah. “Maybe when I've been released from the extra drills, after Turnover. You can teach me yourself.” That would be something to look forward to in the new turn. The keen-witted old auntie was good company, warm and kindly and far less meddlesome than many others of her advanced age. In the few short hours Rahnis had spent in her company, she'd already proved her worth as a good judge of the characters of various weyrfolk: who could reliably get things done, who could be trusted to work without supervision or to supervise others, which workers had extra skills, and which would cover up their failings by blaming others. Hardly surprising, seeing as she'd apparently had a hand in raising almost everyone in the Weyr. Even better, she usually couched her advice within the most amusing anecdotes. Rahnis wasn't sure she believed half of them, but they were certainly entertaining to hear as well as being a much more memorable way of getting all the different names and faces straight in her head than the wing- and weyrfolk-lists she'd been supplied with several sevendays before.

“Nonsense," Quaiya scoffed. "I'll set one of my brats to the task, and you'll start tomorrow.”

That was the other thing Rahnis liked about Quaiya: the woman wasn't afraid to disagree with a weyrwoman to her face. She admired the woman's persistence, too, but there was no getting around the fact that she just didn't have the time to learn any kind of new crafting. What with caring for Alaireth while the dragon regained her post-clutch stamina, drilling with Sh'vek or R'fint, sweep flights, Threadfalls, servicing Delene's 'thrower as well as her own, assisting the Weyrwoman and getting to grips with the Weyr's records, Rahnis scarcely had time to bathe or eat. On top of all that was all the work needed in the Lower Caverns, most of which involved some form of argument with Egritte. The fardling woman seemed to think that making sense of the Weyr's logistics took second place to ensuring that the Weyr's newest goldrider was suitably attired to flirt with the bronzeriders. Oh, the headwoman didn't deny that there were _issues_ to be overcome, but she was utterly convinced that the Weyr's problems could all be laid at the feet of a few incompetent underlings and wastefulness on the part of the weyrfolk and riders. Rahnis had sworn that, the next time Egritte chose to chant _Dragonman, avoid excess!_ at her, the woman would find a few of those age-old laws adhering to her very uncomfortably indeed. She shook her head, trying to put the Headwoman out of her mind. She'd have to deal with her again soon enough as it was. “Will that be before or after I have to...”

Quaiya wasn't going to be easily put off. “Pshah! Busy hands focus the mind and clear the head. I think you need a bit of that, and don't deny it.”

 _The old one is right, my dear_ , Alaireth said.

“Besides, you'll pick it up quick enough,” Quaiya continued. “Think of all the time you've saved drying your hair since you got it cut, eh? Less than that will be plenty enough for the basics.”

Rahnis self-consciously ran a hand over her newly shortened hair, and groaned. “Beset on all sides, I am. Tomorrow, then. Send your youngster while I'm helping the Weyrwoman with her breakfast.”

“I shall, girl. Next winter, you'll be wearing knits of your own.” She reached down to take a finished piece of mending from one of her charges, and inspected it carefully. “A good repair, Malleny. I can barely see your stitches along the seam. Hopefully M'dex will be a bit less careless with it in future. Some types of damage are easier to fix than others.” Her eyes lifted from the shirt she was holding, and bored into Rahnis' own. “No change today then?” she said softly.

“Not today.”

“Tsk. Poor Maenida.”

“She's better than everyone seems to think. It's just so exhausting for her. There's so much she has to relearn, and she's still sleeping most the day. And then there's all the fellis. It'll take a while yet before she's back on her feet again.”

“So everyone says.” Quaiya sighed loudly, tossed the rider's shirt into the basket of mended clothing, and set to work with her knitting needles once again. “You don't get to my age without losing a lot of your peers. Most to Thread or childbirth, when I was your age, but now it's all just age and infirmity. Hearts and lungs and winter chills, weak bones, growths, and plain old senility. And the falling sickness, too. Quite a few to that one, some fast and some slow. The slow ones were some of the saddest. Trapped in their bodies, half-paralysed most of the time, but sometimes they just weren't the same person any more, between one moment and the next.” The look on the old woman's face was far too knowing. “Never riders, though. Dragons take 'em between right off when that happens.”

Rahnis finished off the first of her meatrolls, and wondered whether Quaiya's words meant anything more than a simple statement of fact. When Rahnis had been a child, one of the men at Ista's beasthold had suffered a nasty fall from a runner. The man had been the best rider and trainer they'd had in generations. It had been several sevendays before he'd come to his senses again, but when he finally did he couldn't remember how to walk or ride, or much else either. He'd had to learn it all from scratch, just like a little child. Everyone could see how frustrating he'd found it, but he was riding again before he could walk. Maenida had a lot to re-learn as well. Physically, she could control her own limbs and bodily functions at least as well as a small child. Communication was difficult for her, but even dulled by all the fellis she was taking one could tell that her mind was still intact, especially when Kiath passed on her thoughts directly. Master Rynder was certain that she'd continue to show improvements, so Sh'vek said. She'd only spoken to the Master Healer once herself, but he'd been very reassuring: ' _The human mind has remarkable powers of recovery,'_ he'd said, and: _'Anything she learned once, she can probably learn again'._

One of the greenriders looked up from his yarns. “Happened to old J'rap and Yenarrath, that did, back when I was a weyrling. Not right off, mind.”

“They went _between_?”

“That they did, weyrwoman. We was all eating our dinners, when he collapsed. All weak on one side, talking nonsense, and he got hurried off by the healers. Yenarrath was wailing half the night, even after the healers said he'd likely live, so they bedded J'rap down beside him just to get some quiet. Infirmary was right next to the barracks, so we all saw it happen. J'rap was smiling and nodding away one second, and right the next Yenarrath was gone, taking J'rap with him. ' _Where's my J'rap?'_ , he said, right before they went, and every one of us heard it. Old J'rap must've got stricken a second time, I reckon.”

Rahnis wasn't sure that she completely agreed with O'kash's assessment. There was a world of difference between _Where's my J'rap_ and _Where's MY J'rap_. Quaiya was right; not everyone was the same person after a brain injury, and not everything _could_ be re-learned. Training and riding a runner was a very, very different matter from Impressing and riding a dragon. She shivered, worried that she might finally have figured out the _why_ behind Maenida and Kiath's continuing need for support. Maenida seemed to be the same person she'd always been, at least according to Sh'vek, but perhaps there was something in her that Kiath needed that she no longer had easy access to. A wave of despair washed over her, but she ruthlessly pushed it to the back of her mind. No. Kiath still lived, and as long as she did, there was every hope for Maenida's full recovery.

“Huh,” said the other rider. “Them were the days, when we could hope to live long enough for age to get us.”

“Not caught sight of your own reflection yet this decade, F'lyn?” O'kash asked.

“With _this_ face?” He sucked in his cheeks and waggled his ears at the youngsters, the muscles in his face twisting hideously around the scar tissue of old threadscore, setting the children giggling loudly. “Ha!”

It was a horrible, ridiculous sight. Rahnis couldn't help herself from joining in with the laughter, and immediately noticed the tension in her body easing. “Faranth, F'lyn, I needed that laugh. First I've had in the last month. I swear, half the Weyr must think me the most miserable woman on all of Pern, the way I've been feeling – and acting.”

One of the younger children looked up. “My da says you're just proddy. My da says he cou-”

“Shush, Garsha,” Quaiya said. “Get on with your work.”

The child couldn't have had more than seven or eight turns, but age and innocent intent didn't make the words any less cutting. They were saying _that_ of her, were they? She bit her lip and inhaled deeply through her nose. There were several choice remarks running through her head that she'd love to say to the girl's father, whoever he was, but that could wait. “Well, hopefully he and the rest of the Weyr will see the better side of me long before it comes to that.”

O'kash gave a hearty laugh. “You goldriders have it easy. Four times a turn, my Shonath rises, even now.”

“First time I've heard you complain about it,” one of the Lower Caverns women said.

“Ah, but I don't get to sit on my arse on a nice warm pile of sand for three months afterwards, do I?”

“I shouldn't think you'd be sitting at all, the way you normally go on!”

The adults and two of the older children shared a knowing laugh. Quaiya tapped her needles against her empty hand thoughtfully. “Any children of your own yet, weyrwoman?”

The question took Rahnis completely by surprise. “What?”

“Children. I'm sure you know how it all works.”

“Not yet,” she said, shaking her head. “And I've been a rider almost ten turns now, so I'm not really expecting them, either. Too much _between_ ing, especially now. Why do you ask?”

Quaiya smiled, and stayed silent.

Rahnis finished her klah, and thoughfully took another bite of her roll. She was fairly certain she'd conceived M'ton's children in the past, but had never carried them long. It had been hard to come to terms with at first, even knowing that most female riders stayed childless, but like all things one became accustomed to it after a while. If Quaiya was suggesting what she suspected...well, it wasn't completely impossible, and it might even explain her exhaustion and over-emotional mental state. She'd not been quite this way the other times, when she'd been more sure of herself, but....

“Weyrwoman Rahnis?”

“Mmmph?” She looked up to see one of the Weyr's cooks approaching, the same woman who'd carried out the kitchen inventory over night, and swallowed her mouthful hastily. “What is it, Dannia?”

“I wondered if I might have a word, before the Headwoman and weyrwoman Delene return.”

“Of course you...wait, _return_? Egritte isn't here?”

“No, weyrwoman. I'm told they both went to Tillek, right after breakfast. Would've come to find you sooner, but I do have a whole Weyr to cook for.”

“Oh, Faranth!” A cold, sinking feeling swept through her belly, and she leapt up from her seat. “Egritte _promised_ me she'd let me look over the details before they were finalised. If she rushed them.... You did give her the inventory, right?”

“Aye. Had a whole slate listing the extras we needed as well, _and_ where we could trade some staples back to the Hold.”

Rahnis let out her breath in a long sigh. “Oh, well done. That must be-” The look on Dannia's face stopped her mid-sentence. _Alaireth?_

_Yes?_

_There's trouble here. We may need to head to Tillek. Linnebith took the headwoman there; are they there still?_

_They are. They're with the Lord of that Hold._

Rahnis focused her attention back on Dannia again. “Sorry, Dannia. There's more, isn't there?”

The cook folded her arms across her broad chest. “Do you know what she _said_ to me? What she _did_?”

That didn't sound good. “Go on.”

“Oh, I told her what we needed, and what we didn't, and gave her the slates just as you asked. And she wiped the both of them clean! Hours, it took to get that work done, and she just... she said they couldn't possibly be right, that I must've got the numbers wrong. 'No, headwoman,' I told her, _and_ that we'd checked everything twice. That was when she told me I was a lying, wasteful, incompetent idiot, and that I didn't deserve a place in a Weyr like hers. And she shut the door in my face.”

“Oh, Dannia.”

“Well? What are you going to do about it, weyrwoman? You got me to stick my neck out, but it ain't you who'll be sent back to live off stringy stewed wherry in a freezing cothold before next Threadfall, is it?”

“It won't come to that, I promise,” Rahnis said. “How much of the inventory could you reconstruct? How quickly? And how low _are_ the Weyr's stocks?”

“I can tell you right now we're shortest on fruits and meat. Been bulking the meals up with grains more'n I'd like, but even that'll be a problem soon. We'll eat well for another sevenday. After that, unless Egritte gets half as much again out of Tillek as we normally would, the riders'll have to start bringing back wherries daily, and raiding their nests for eggs to boot. The rest, the Weyr will have to buy, beg or steal.”

“Get me a list. And as much as you can remember of your list of tradeables as you can. Egritte's still at Tillek with weyrwoman Delene, but I don't want to wait for her to get back.”

Dannia nodded and bustled off, while Rahnis tried to figure out what best to do. She _could_ go straight on to Tillek, interrupt Egritte's meeting with Lord Maxeny and the Hold's steward... and likely have a screaming argument with the woman right there and then. Or, wait until they returned, and find out _then_ how bad the tithe would be. All without another one of the all-too-public confrontations that Sh'vek had warned her about. Rahnis glared up at the cavern ceiling and squeezed shut her eyes. The need to know exactly what Egritte had done – and why – was like an itch she couldn't scratch.

“Need help, girl?”

She opened her eyes to find Quaiya beside her, and gave her a bitter smile. “Got a key to Egritte's office?”

The old woman shook her head. “I was never a headwoman. That was her grandmother's job. A good headwoman, Reenee was, though I can't say I ever really liked her much. Never liked her daughter, either – she was lined up for the job too, but died birthing twins.”

“Twins? Don't tell me there's two like Egritte out there?”

“Faranth forfend! Then we'd be in trouble. And we are in trouble, aren't we?”

Rahnis sighed. “It's looking that way. Shame the management talents didn't run in the family.”

Quaiya beckoned one of the Weyr's children to join them. “Sanior, go fetch Pellick to the headwoman's office, would you? Tell Shai I need him for a little job.” The young boy darted away into one of the passages leading out off the main cavern. “Come along then, weyrwoman,” Quaiya continued, taking Rahnis' arm. “He won't be long, and Pellick's likely to wander off if we're not there to meet him. At my pace, we'd better be off now.”

“Does Pellick have a key, then?”

Quaiya laughed. “You'll see.”

It wasn't long before the lad returned, a short, broad-chested, balding man following awkwardly in his wake. Pellick looked to be in his early forties, and his face wore a frown of concentration as he stomped his way down the passage. Beneath a wherhide vest, he wore a shirt with only one of its sleeves rolled up, baring a heavily muscled arm. Was that Quaiya's answer to a locked door? Pellick's other sleeve, cuff-laces undone, dangled wetly well below the level of his hand. “I don't think the Weyr can afford a new door, Quaiya,” Rahnis said.

“Indeed it can't. Guess again, weyrwoman.” Quaiya stepped forward, and spoke Pellick's name softly. As he looked up from his feet, one of the most genuine smiles Rahnis had ever seen grew on the man's face. “Let me fix that sleeve for you, Pellick dear,” Quaiya said. “I think it's come undone. No, the other one!”

The man giggled childishly at his wet sleeve, flapping it up and down. “Like it! Like her too. Like my shells best of all. More like them? Round and round and round and round and round and....” Pellick started spinning on the spot, his wet sleeve sending droplets of water spattering in all directions.

Quaiya looked apologetically over her shoulder at Rahnis. “He's a simple soul. Came to the Weyr as a candidate from the smithcraft, but he came down with the most dreadful fever the day before the eggs hatched. His crafthall wouldn't have him back afterwards, poor boy. But he loves his laundrywork, and he didn't lose everything he learned as an apprentice. Here, boy. Got a lock for you.”

“Lock?”

Pellick slowed in his circling, allowing Quaiya to take hold of his damp sleeve and neatly roll it back. She guided him over to Egritte's door, then pulled out one of her hairpins and placed it in his hand. Rahnis moved closer to watch. Pellick's eyes were tightly closed, while his fingers twitched delicately at the lock. Scant moments later, he stepped back from the door, grinning broadly again.

Quaiya tested the handle, and opened the door. “Oh, well done, Pellick. Please give me my pin back now.”

“Easy!” Pellick said as he handed it over. “More shells?”

“No, but I've got some feathers for you in my room.”

“Shells!”

Quaiya shook her head. “I'm sorry, Pellick.”

He pouted, then looked across hopefully at Rahnis. “Shells? She shells?”

“Sea shells?” Rahnis spread her hands in front of her. “Not here, but I can get some for you, I promise. Tomorrow.” She glanced sidelong at Quaiya, hoping that the man understood the concept.

“Good,” Quaiya said. “There you go Pellick, feathers today and shells tomorrow. Let's go and look at them, shall we?” She led him away by the arm, leaving Rahnis to see what answers she could find in the headwoman's office.

Rahnis closed the door behind her, unshuttered the glowbaskets in their alcoves and scanned the room. Ignoring the cushioned and carpeted majority, she focused her attention on the small corner that Egritte devoted to her work. Today, the ornate worktable was covered by an embroidered white-work cloth, displaying stylised dragons in flight, and nothing more. The larger of the two wall-ledges held the woman's tilting mirror, hair combs and a brush. A wineskin marked with a Tillek stamp rested on the other, beside a neat triangle of six glazed cups. A large slate was nailed to the wall beside the second shelf, with the daily roster for the Weyrfolk work groups neatly chalked onto it. Someone – most likely Egritte herself – had taken the time to sketch an elaborate twisted border around the edge. On the other side of the roster, three sets of keys hung on their hooks next to a thin silk scarf, above a large iron-bound linen chest.

Rahnis lifted the cloth from the headwoman's desk, and opened the drawers one after the other. The first held a single wax tablet and stylus, a shallow square reed basket holding chalks arranged in length-order, a stoppered bottle of ink and a set of wherry-quill pens. The second was empty except for another scarf and one of Egritte's carved bone hair-pins. The last one held a set of samples from the weaver-hall, and several sketches of gowns impressed onto wax. Rahnis turned around, and pulled aside one of the wall-hangings. Behind it were more shelves, these ones bearing a tidy stack of slates, a full row of fragile, hide-bound record books, and a box of more recent hide scrolls bound in ribbons of the Weyr's dark blue and black. A lockbox that she knew held a small supply of marks sat beneath the shelves. There was no tell-tale layer of dust that she could read for signs of disturbance, nothing to suggest how the headwoman might have spent her last minutes or even hours in the room. Egritte had erased the kitchen inventory, but what about those from the Healer and the Weyrsmith and everyone else, or the hide she herself had given the headwoman? Where were they?

 _Don't think like yourself_ , Alaireth prompted. _You know what she was doing._

 _Meant to be doing._ Rahnis sighed, and paced back to the desk. _How do you think like someone who doesn't think at all, anyway?_

Alaireth's mind spun a dragon's-eye visual of the room, bringing the large wherhide ottoman in the opposite corner into sharp focus. _There. See the seat? You told me she sits around all the time. That's where she does the sitting._

Rahnis squinted her own eyes. There was a clear indentation on its surface, just where someone might most comfortably sit with their feet up while leaning against the wall. Beneath the padded seat, two hooked catches swung loosely – whatever Egritte kept in there, she obviously needed access to it regularly, otherwise she'd surely have secured those catches properly. Rahnis crossed the room and lifted the heavy lid. None of the missing inventories were inside, just another set of old hides. She carried them over to the desk, and checked the tags. _Reenee, Reenee, Reenee_ read the author-marks, while the dates denoted an assortment of Turns over a span of three decades. All of them were tithe records.

Dry-mouthed, Rahnis sank back onto the headwoman's chair. How much did Egritte rely on her grandmother's records? If Reenee had been as good a headwoman as Quaiya claimed, Egritte could probably manage most of a headwoman's tasks using Reenee's records for guidance. She'd avoid a lot of mistakes and cover up for her own weaknesses that way, but no matter how accurate the records were, or how competent the person who wrote them, they could only go so far. Rahnis was pretty certain now that Egritte hadn't paid a jot of attention to the inventories that she and the weyrfolk had provided. She had no need to, did she? Not when she had her grandmother's tithe records right at hand.

 _Interval_ tithe records.

_Alaireth?_

_I come!_

Rahnis left Egritte's office at a run. Crossing the main hall, she paused only long enough to grab her coat and yell for Dannia, or for someone to find her and send her to the bowl right away. Half way back to her own weyr she skidded on a patch of ice, barely keeping her feet and wrenching a muscle in her torso in the process. Perhaps she didn't need to hurry _quite_ that fast.

 _Indeed you don't!_ Alaireth said as she backwinged to a graceful sliding halt a dragonlength distant. She was carrying a bundle of straps in her jaws, Rahnis saw.

“Did you....”

 _Passenger straps, too_. The queen opened her mouth, and dropped them at her rider's feet. _I also told Ormaith that we were going to Tillek._

“Oh, well done!” Rahnis pulled out the two longer lengths of leather out from the bundle, and slung them over Alaireth's lowered neck. Once they were buckled snugly, and the buckles themselves baffled with felt, she added the cross-pieces and the passenger-clips. _Did you tell Ormaith_ why? she asked the dragon as she finished.

_I told him the headwoman had forgotten something._

Rahnis found herself torn between a smile and a frown. It _would_ be funny if the Weyr wasn't relying on this tithe being _right._ “Oh, yes.”

_The woman you called for comes._

Poor Dannia was breathing heavily as she staggered to a halt beside Alaireth. “Here,” she said, handing over a carry-sack. “This is what you wanted.”

Rahnis slung the bag over a shoulder, and shook her head. “I need you as well. Would you rather mount first or second?”

Dannia eyed Alaireth warily as the queen lowered her neck to rest it flat on the ground. “Prefer not to mount at all...but I wouldn't miss the chance to see Egritte put in her place. Whatever is easiest, weyrwoman.”

“I'll go first then.” She hauled herself into place between Alaireth's ridges, and pointed out the lowest toe-hold. “Best you start with your right foot, Dannia, and the handhold bound in red cloth. Then get your left foot as high as you can, push up again, and I ought to be able to pull you up the rest of the way.” As hard as she tried not to, Rahnis found herself growing frustrated at the awkwardness of Dannia's climb. She was eager to be off, and could feel her temper rising fast in anticipation of what awaited her in Tillek. But that wouldn't do. She forced a smile onto her face as she buckled the woman in place. “We'll go _between_ as soon as we're level with the rim. Hopefully we won't be gone from the Weyr too...”

_Linnebith returns._

“...long.” Rahnis covered her face with her hands, and cried out in frustration. They were too late!

“What is it, weyrwoman? Oh. They're back.”

Rahnis unbuckled the straps furiously, helped Dannia back to the ground, and asked her to wait by Alaireth. By then, Delene and Egritte were already almost to the Lower Caverns, and she had to chase after them.

“Egritte! Wait!”

The two women stopped in their tracks, Delene smiling beatifically. “We did it, Rahnis. Everything's all organised.”

“You promised you'd check with me first.”

“Why ever should we do that? I know I've no head for figures, but G'dil does, and I got him to double-check the numbers, if that's what you're worried about. We've got more than enough coming from Tillek. Or do you think we forgot about you?” She looked Rahnis up and down disapprovingly. “Well, we didn't. Egritte has bargained for some extra luxuries for the whole Weyr to enjoy, as well as some gowns and the most delightful beads for you. You'll look fit to be seen outside the Weyr by Turnover.”

Rahnis unclenched her jaw, and forced herself to ignore Delene. “Egritte. You used Reenee's records. Did you adapt them _at all_?”

Egritte glanced past her, back towards Alaireth and Dannia. “If you're talking about that woman's....”

“I'm talking about applying Interval tithes to a fardling Pass!” Rahnis yelled.

Egritte pulled back slightly, affronted. “How dare you! What kind of numbskull do you take me for? Of _course_ we adjusted for the extra population of a Pass. I do know how to multiply two numbers together.”

And that was the answer Rahnis had feared. It could have been worse – the woman might have cribbed her grandmother's figures exactly – but not by much She gave the headwoman a withering look. “You _idiot_. We have more than twice as many dragons, and their riders. The Lower Caverns population is half as large again as it was in Reenee's day.”

“Roughly,” Egritte said. “I was much more precise than that.”

“You can be as precise as you like, but it doesn't change a thing! We won't have enough food to last the winter.”

“Perhaps if the riders weren't filching food all the time!”

“What?”

“ _Dragonman, avoid excess_  
greed will bring the Weyr distress!  
To the age-old laws adhere,  
prosper, thus-”

“Prosper?” Rahnis shook her head in amazement. “Fighting dragons eat more when they have to fight Thread three times a sevenday. Weyrling dragons eat more than fighting dragons. And as for a breeding queen...!”

“Tillek doesn't supply us with livestock, weyrwoman.”

“Did I say I was finished?”

Egritte fell silent, momentarily cowed. Rahnis didn't wait for her to find enough courage to argue back. “Leather suffers from char, wear and tear, but most of all it develops cracks from the chill of _between_. Straps need replacing twice a turn during a Pass. Dragons and straps, both need the oil that Tillek supplies us with, easily three times what you'll have requested. Weyrling riders go through clothes fast, and so do the youngsters in the Lower Caverns. The whole population is skewed. Wear and tear, how in Faranth's name can you overlook the fardling _wear and tear_? You may not care for worn clothes or hard labour, but our Weyr is running itself ragged, working itself to the bone right now, and a diet suitable for mincing Hold ladies simply won't do. It may taste nice, but there's a reason why Tarkan's running short on restoratives as well as everything else. Hungry, tired people make mistakes. They get sick. Their dragons make mistakes, and then we have Threadscores and deaths to worry about too. Is that your plan, Egritte? Get the Weyr into the perfect efficiency of Reenee's day by stripping us down to Interval numbers? Well? What the flaming, fardling....”

A man's voice barked out her name while she groped for a more suitable set of curse words. Sh'vek, she knew, even before she'd turned around.

“It seems I need to remind you that Delene is Acting Weyrwoman here, Rahnis,” the Weyrleader said fiercely. “ _Not_ you.”

“ _Acting_ Weyrwoman Delene, yes. Shame she hasn't grasped the importance of the first part of her title yet.” Her temper up, Rahnis couldn't stop herself in time, and she knew she'd gone too far as soon as she'd finished saying it. Delene was meant to be a trusted colleague, maybe someday even a good friend, and she really hadn't been fair to her. There were tears in Delene's eyes, she saw, in the brief moment before the other woman whirled around and raced back to her dragon.

Egritte shook her head disapprovingly. “Well!”

“Oh, shut up,” Rahnis snarled.

“ _Rahnis_.”

This time, there was no missing the warning in the Weyrleader's voice. Nor was the weyrbowl as empty as it had been a few minutes earlier – she'd just given Egritte a very public browbeating, exactly the thing he'd warned her against. Unconsciously, she jutted her chin forward challengingly as she met his piercing grey eyes. Shells, but he was furious! However he made her pay for this, he had to know that she wasn't the only one at fault, surely? _Alaireth?_

_He says you'd better be right._

Rahnis nodded, acknowledging that the message had reached her. “Weyrleader,” she said, and deliberately dropped her gaze and looked away. Now it was Egritte's turn to look uncomfortable. The headwoman was flushing, her mouth working soundlessly as she fiddled with a button on her cuff.

“It surely won't make _all_ that much di....” Egritte's voice quickly trailed off in the face of the Weyrleader's anger. Her eyes darted back and forth fitfully, almost as if she, too, wished to run away.

“Weyrwoman Delene somehow convinced me that you were the best person for your job. For that reason only, you may keep it. For now. Now get out of my sight. As for you,” and he turned his attention back to Rahnis, “you're late for our drills. We'll start with Tillek Hold, shall we? I assume you can make the necessary corrections to the upcoming tithe.”

She took a deep breath, and pushed her doubts aside. “Yes. I'll need Dannia's help, but I can do it.” Another thought occurred to her, some way of fixing what she'd wrought. “Do you want me to take responsibility for the mistakes, too?”

There was no kindness in the smile he gave her. “Naturally. Get yourselves ready. I do not have time to waste, today.”

He stalked off towards his dragon, and Rahnis closed her eyes in relief. It could have been worse. A lot worse.

 _You took it on, Ormaith says, and you must deal with it._ Alaireth told her. _Any further problems for the Weyr rest with you._

She laughed dryly. _Is that all?_

Alaireth's tone was apologetic. _No. First thing tomorrow morning, he wants you to deal with the Weyrlings' blocked latrines. But I do have some better news. The morning after, Narnoth asks if we can meet!_

 _He does?_ Grinning foolishly, Rahnis whispered her weyrmate's name. She might be spending every restday from now until Turnover neck deep in filth, but it no longer mattered. All at once, her troubles seemed to have halved.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's very, very interesting what people pick up on in this story, and what they don't. My beta readers ended up kicking themselves for some of the things they missed, but were screaming at the characters right alongside me for others. *grin* I'll point some of the subtleties out later, if necessary - though at that point/those points they should all be screamingly obvious...


	11. Chapter 11

_I saw the dragons flying high_  
 _My heart flew with them, far above_  
 _Gold and bronze, they spiralled on_  
 _And all my thoughts were turned to love_

_I saw the dragons swooping low_  
 _Across the fields around my hold_  
 _Blue and brown, they circled down_  
 _A-Searching for their newest gold_

_I saw the dragons flying high_  
 _My love flew with them, and my heart_  
 _Was torn to pieces as she left_  
 _We would forever be apart_

  

**Morning, 17.12.34**

**Ista Weyr**

 

Beneath a heavily clouded sky, Ista Weyr readied itself for Threadfall.

M'ton paced along his chosen patch of the Weyr's rim, and surveyed the activity below. Small dust clouds swept the bowl, tracing the paths of weyrfolk and dragons as they busied themselves with their preparations. The ground around the firestone bunkers was heaving with dragons and riders, while a continuous stream of weyrfolk carried sacks of firestone to the other marshalling points set around the bowl. By contrast, the corral, more or less directly below him, was eerily quiet. Every last one of the herdbeasts had been rounded up shortly after dawn and penned under cover in their Thread shelters. No Thread had _ever_ had the gall to escape Ista's wings over their own home terrain – at least, not according to Vallenka – but the shelters were useful all the same. Dumb as they were, most herdbeasts lived long enough at the Weyr to become accustomed to small numbers of hunting dragons in flight, until they found themselves in the belly of one of them. But put the whole Weyr aloft over their heads, and chances were you'd have a stampede and broken fences on your hands. Not ideal, not with the healers already setting up beside the lake. That, too, was empty. No dragon would choose to bathe so soon before Threadfall was due. Afterwards, the sea and lake would be thick with dragons and riders washing the reek of firestone out of their hides.

He cast his gaze across the bowl, and up the face of the opposite wall of the Weyr. Ista's jagged peaks stretched higher on the north-west side, today dressed predominantly in browns and greys instead of shining brightly pale and criss-crossed with stark shadows. The Star Stones were masked from his sight by the bulk of the brown dragon on Watch and two greens who'd spent the best part of the morning bickering away at one another. Lower down, the dark holes of dragonweyrs dotted the rockface, but though there was a dragon or two poised on almost every ledge, the absence of Ista's usual bright sunlight failed to set them off to their usual advantage. He couldn't see his old ledge from where he was, but there was another dragon residing there now. The Weyrwoman was preparing her flamethrower and tanks on Carth's ledge, but the great queen herself was still inside the weyr – Carth always slept as long as she could before a Fall. M'ton glanced back to the Star Stones, checking the position of the greens once again.

 _Call Haffrenth down,_ he asked Narnoth, placing a hand on the bronze's shoulder. _We'll have a clearer mark this way._

_It's time?_

_I think so. Besides, this is the third time she's distracted Joxith from his Watch duties._ He hauled himself up the handholds of Narnoth's fighting straps and settled himself into place. Together, they watched the larger of the two greens glide down to her own weyr. She disappeared inside, and then it was their own turn. M'ton gave Narnoth a mental nudge, and the dragon launched himself from the rim, his broad wings making the short flight down to Carth's ledge a fine example of efficient flying.

Vallenka paused in her checks as they landed, but soon resumed her low mutterings without turning around. The Weyrwoman was efficient and well-practised at her task – she could probably have managed it in her sleep – but he'd guess that even another three or four decades wouldn't alter her habits of double- or even triple-checking every single joint, gauge and valve. She'd certainly done her best to instil the same habit in the other queenriders of the Weyr. M'ton slid down from Narnoth's neck and waited for her to finish.

His own preparations for threadfall were equally well under control. He'd been up at dawn to overfly the hills where the leading edge was most likely to strike, getting back to the Weyr just in time to grab some klah before briefing the other Wingleaders on a few final revisions to their tactics. Next time, he'd make sure he returned early enough to eat as well. Down in the bowl, his Wingseconds Gr'cail and O'tari would be making their final spot-checks while the dragons of their Wing crunched and chewed their way through several dragonweights of firestone. All he himself had left to do was to fill his own dragon's second stomach with firestone. He didn't usually leave it so close to Threadfall...but there was more than enough time left in which to properly stoke Narnoth's flames. He had all the time in the world, now.

Vallenka finally rose and turned around; M'ton self-consciously straightened his posture, then decided he was being ridiculous; she wouldn't waste time finding fault with him there.

“Weyrleader.”

“Good morning, Vallenka.”

A maternal smile slowly grew on the Weyrwoman's face as he spoke, and he did his best to return it as she looked him up and down. “Well, you look the part today, I'll give you that,” she said. “More than N'essen ever managed. But you _definitely_ need more rest. You've time for it, remember.”

M'ton laughed. “So I do. I never realised how hard you and N'essen worked yourselves until now.”

“It gets easier with time.” Vallenka reached down and hefted her flamethrower up onto her shoulder as if it were half the weight he knew it to be. “Everything does.” She looked him in the eyes, and added in a dry voice: “Just carry on as you are and soon you'll have nothing to worry about.”

“If you say so.” He shook his head, unwilling to dispute the point verbally. The Weyr's last two threadfalls had all passed without incident, but his agreement with Igen's Weyrleaders was still unresolved, and he knew that the mountain of administrative documents on his desk wasn't shrinking anywhere near fast enough to please the Weyrwoman. “I thought I might head up to Igen again later, once Ista's clear of Thread. Our joint Keroon Fall's less than a sevenday away now, and I was thinking we could send T'ten's Wing their way a day or two early.”

“Flaming two threads at once, M'ton?” the Weyrwoman asked, eyebrows raised. “T'ten won't respect you any better from a distance than he does right here in his home Weyr.”

He probably wouldn't, but at least if he wasn't around M'ton wouldn't have to hear his complaints quite so often. “No, but his Wing's capabilities might impress-”

Vallenka cut him off with a sharp frown. “I thought we agreed you'd be leaving R'loe and Irdana to me? Concentrate on the priorities, M'ton! I've been waiting for that report on Ista's burrow statistics for a full sevenday now.”

And he'd been struggling to pull it together for twice that length of time! “About that report. I know I said I'd have it ready for you by today, but-”

“And you will,” she said, her firm tone brooking no disagreement. “Go now, get it _done_. That way it won't be hanging over you during Threadfall.”

“I'd planned on meeting with Rahnis today, Vallenka.”

The Weyrwoman rolled her eyes. “Oh, _come_ now! Surely you can find enough time to please the both of us!”

The solution was obvious, really. M'ton grinned. “Shard it, I can, can't I?”

“Mmm-hm. I always find the sea cliffs on the north side rather isolated at this time of the turn, if you need some peace and quiet.” She walked across the ledge, and placed her flamethrower down on the ground beside him, next to the waiting agenothree tanks and Carth's straps. “Do you need a visual?”

“No, I know the spot.” It was a good wherry-hunting area, and popular with fire-lizards during the hours when the tide exposed the rockpools at the base of the cliff. M'ton wondered if any of them would be about today.

“Good,” Vallenka said. She wiped her hands clean on a scrap of cloth before crouching down to start checking over the stitching of Carth's harness. “Finish it off and sit on your rump for a bit. I don't imagine you'll get your rest in with Rahnis, and you _will_ need some before you come back to the here and now for Fall.”

“I'll see how I feel. Easy enough to double up again somewhere else if I think I need it.”

“Double up again?” She sounded surprised, as if she hadn't expected him to come up with the idea by himself. “Yes, that would certainly make a difference.”

“Then that's what I'll do.”

Vallenka turned to look up at him. “Timing can be risky, M'ton, and you're still very new to it. Perhaps it would be better if you postponed your meeting with Rahnis until another day. The report, too, if you're struggling with it.”

Her lack of confidence in him was cutting, but he didn't think that conceding defeat today would improve matters at all. “I _can_ manage, Vallenka.”

She made a doubtful noise, and then proceeded to rub even more salt into his wounds. “Can you? There's been talk among the riders – ranking ones, some of them – and I know you can't have missed _all_ of it.”

He smiled with relief as she finished speaking, and stretched out a kink in his shoulders. Was that all that had got her worried? “That? I've heard it, believe me. And yes: from K'mallo as well as T'ten.”

“And from L'daff?”

“Oh.” M'ton winced. He'd thought the other Wingleader from his old flight would be more understanding of the pressure he was under than that. He'd been supportive enough _before_ M'ton had asked him to be his Second. “L'daff too, eh?” _Add him to the list, Narnoth. Let's see if we can collect the full set by the end of the month._

“Well, there's always _some_ talk with a change of Weyrleader,” Vallenka said, in what M'ton hoped was meant to be a reassuring tone.

“Huh.” _Did_ we _talk, when N'essen took over from T'ten? Or when B'dallack stepped aside?_

_When was that? I don't remember them. Should I?_

_No, no! That was all back in our weyrling days. Forget I mentioned it._

_Forget... what?_ The warm pitch of Narnoth's mind couldn't quite mask the dragon's laughter.

_Ha, ha. And forget L'daff too. What does he know, anyway?_

“Jealousy, most of it.” Vallenka patted him companionably on the shoulder. M'ton found himself feeling almost grateful for the humanity behind the touch, until she added, “And of _course_ you're still inexperienced, you're bound to be making mistakes here and there for a while yet. But at least you're working hard. Keep at it, and you'll serve the Weyr perfectly.” She lifted her hand from his shoulder, then moved it back again to straighten out his rank-knots. “There. And I don't want you coming back to lead the fight against Threadfall all dishevelled, now. We'll talk more later, I expect, but Carth's awake now. I've already asked her to give Narnoth that visual I mentioned.”

“Of course, Weyrwoman. As you say.” M'ton unclenched his fists from behind his back – he'd managed to start standing to attention some time earlier, shard it – and turned to mount Narnoth again. _Come on, boy, let's get out of here. What did Carth give you?_

_Here. A pleasant enough spot. Now, or-_

_Right now will do just fine,_ M'ton answered, but in truth he wished he'd left several minutes sooner _. Ready? Up we go, then!_

Five downstrokes of Narnoth's wings had them airborne and high enough to transfer _between_. M'ton leaned back to look down past the bronze's tail to the ledge they'd just left. Vallenka had a hand held to her eyes, watching them leave. He fixed the visual carefully in his mind. If everything went as it should, they'd be back again before she finished turning around.

 

 

 

There was a beach on Boll where they'd always sat out the flights of the other queens together, and that was the marker he held in his mind. The sun would have been barely an hour above the horizon at the _when_ he was aiming for, but as far as his stomach was concerned it was closer to dusk than dawn. The hours he'd spent working on his report perched above Ista's northern sea-cliffs and then resting in the shadow of the Red Butte all added up. Next time, he'd pack two lunches to carry with him instead of just the one.

 _And you should find somewhere shadier to sit as well,_ Narnoth suggested _. You've seen enough sun today, M'ton, but there'll be fruiting trees and plenty of shade on the beach. I think I'll eat, too, after we've fought Thread._

He and Narnoth were both as well rested as they could be, but perhaps the bronze was right about having had too much sunshine. M'ton had had a headache lingering behind his eyes since not long after they'd arrived at the Butte, and sleep had done little to diminish it. Could he escape it the same way he was cheating the daylight, or would it follow him through time as well? And would it know which of him to find? _Good idea. Is it your hunger I'm feeling then?_

_I had a whole wherry and one of those large fish just two days back, didn't I? Perhaps I'm feeling yours!_

_Not if you're not feeling my headache as well. You're not, are you?_

_Dragons don't get headaches._

_Dragons are lucky._ M'ton felt momentarily giddy as Narnoth banked to orient himself eastwards. So. Dawn, the beach, Alaireth in the water and Rahnis on the sand, wearing the red shirt he'd given her last Turn, exactly as Alaireth had shown Narnoth earlier. _Do you have it?_

_I do._

_Then let's go!_

They lingered in the cold of _between_ a little longer than he was used to, but aside from that it really felt no different at all. The hardest part of timing was going against the almost visceral revulsion that had been hammered into him as a weyrling: the need not to place details _too_ perfectly unless you were absolutely, totally certain of their reliability. If you inadvertently contradicted something, placed a dragon on the rim that wasn't there, well, you were in trouble. Geography was solid, fixed and reliable, and they'd been taught so well that even adjusting for the changes in light of different timezones stood somewhere between being almost instinctive and of little matter at all. Dragons were locked in time as well as a rider expected them to be, and unless you were fool enough to _concentrate_ on a wrong detail, your dragon would see you safely home. Most of the time. Intentionally loosening that state of _nowness_ , doing so safely and steering your dragon's passage through time as well as space...well, it hadn't been as hard as he'd expected, once he'd assured himself he had the preparation right.

 _We do,_ Narnoth reassured him as they hung blind in the empty darkness of _between. They will be waiting, just as you asked. See?_

Sunlight burned into his eyes, and he squeezed them shut, relying on Narnoth's vision in place of his own. So, his headache had managed to follow him after all. And brought one of its friends.

_Rahnis will help._

M'ton grinned. She was sharding good at that. _So long as she doesn't slap me first, for keeping this trick from her for so long. I do wish Vallenka had told me about it sooner._

_She won't. Alaireth greets us. She says Rahnis has missed you a lot, and is very sorry that you parted so badly._

_It was my fault at least as much. More, perhaps._

_I told Alaireth that too._

_Perhaps I should let you two do all the talking for us._

_Oh? You were intending to_ talk? _I thought...._

The dragon's thoughts dissolved into mental chuckles. M'ton echoed them, and was still laughing as Narnoth skidded to a halt in the soft sand downwind of Rahnis. He slid down from the dragon's back, and almost tripped over his own feet as he rushed to greet his weyrmate. He'd intended to swing her around in the air, but all the strength in his arms seemed to desert him as he reached her, and he settled for merely holding her, kissing her, feeling her warmly pressed against him as if they'd never been separated at all. As they never, ever should have been. He pulled back slightly, and gazed down at her, knowing that Narnoth had shared that thought between all four of them.

“It _is_ you,” she murmured, her eyes bright with emotion. “Really _you_.”

“Who else would I be?”

“People change. I've changed. I've been _hideous_ , really I have.”

M'ton shook his head. “Never that, my dear.”

She mock-pushed him lightly on his chest. “And you! All you tell me is that we need to talk about our future. What in Faranth's name was I _supposed_ to make of that?”

“Didn't Narnoth....”

“Oh, Alaireth told me everything Narnoth asked her too. She wants _so_ much for me to be happy, though, but I just couldn't shake my doubts. Besides, look at the time!”

He glanced back over his shoulder, and winced at the bright glare of the morning light. “Exactly. I'd rather not waste time looking at it too long, Rahnis. Let's get into the shade.” He took her by the hand, and pulled her behind him in a quick jog up the sloping beach, kissing her breathlessly the moment they'd both ducked beneath the low branches of the nearest blooming tree.

Rahnis broke off the kiss first. “M'ton, stop keeping me in suspense like this. I need to know. Have you done it? Have you got a transfer after all?”

“Transfer? Whatever gave you that idea?”

Her face dropped, and she looked away. “Ista fights Thread today. Soon, if not already. You should be there. When I realised where you were in your fall-cycle.... I hoped you'd be here, that you wouldn't just send a messenger for me...but I suppose you can still get back there in time if you mean to leave right away.”

M'ton shook his head, but she was still looking away. He reached out to gently stroke her face, and to draw her gaze back to his own. “Rahnis. I'm not leaving you. Nor Ista, either. Vallenka, she-”

“Vallenka? Don't tell me she's inviting me _back_ again?”

“Shells, no! And I still can't say I disagree with her on that count. But she cares, she really does.” His weyrmate's mouth twisted in clear disbelief, but M'ton knew better. “She knows we've hurt you, and she's more than made amends. Rahnis, we're free to see each other as often as we want, so long as we're discreet about it.”

“During _Threadfall_?”

Her voice was blandly dry, and at the back of M'ton's mind he could sense the strangely ticklish feel of Alaireth, no doubt trying her best to test his probity. “Best time of all!” he added with a chuckle.

“Best time of all? M'ton. You're not making _any_ sense.”

 _Now they're more concerned that you might've cracked under the pressure,_ Narnoth told him.

M'ton didn't doubt it; the familiar signs of worry were clear to see on his weyrmate's face. _She could try to have a_ little _faith in me, couldn't she?_

_Then convince her. Quickly, I suggest, before she has Alaireth call on Carth!_

M'ton groaned. “Shard it, I know I'm not. I meant to explain it all better, but we caught a bit too much afternoon sun earlier today.”

Rahnis eyed him curiously, then looked pointedly off in the direction of the sun and back again.

_I said convince, not confuse!_

He sighed, and pulled her down onto the leaf-strewn sand. “Sit with me. It's all in the records, you see. The Weyrwoman's restricted records, not the ones you know inside out and back to front. She showed them to me, after you'd left.”

“What is?”

“Ista fights Thread today. I have to be there. I _am_ there, right now. And here. And I'm also in two other places as well, resting up and getting this sharding report finished-” he fished the rolled hide out of his pocket and waved it in the air, “-and all of it at once. Any dragon can manage the trick, if you're careful. We have all the time we want, Rahnis. All the time in the world, to be together. I have time to get all my work done, I can be rested to fight Thread, and I can see you. Without letting down the Weyr, or being indiscreet. Everyone knows I'm leading the Weyr against Thread right now, after all. Rahnis, this is the answer, the answer for us both!”

She sat in stunned silence for a minute, taking it all in. No whispering touch in his head this time, but he could see that she was discussing it with Alaireth. At last, she let out her breath in a long sigh, and shook her head. “I don't... no, you wouldn't jest about this. How? How is such a thing even possible?”

“ _Here_ and _there_ are no barriers to a dragon, you know that. But neither are _now_ and _then_. The Weyrwoman's records allude to it in many places, Vallenka tells me, but there's only a few passages where the actual mechanics are described.”

“And what do they say?”

“It's actually pretty straightforward for a proscribed technique, provided you're careful with your visual.” M'ton thought back on his memories of the records. He wasn't certain he could remember them word-for-word, and besides, he _knew_ Rahnis would prefer to read them for herself. So much of the technique revolved around things they were all expressly taught to avoid as weyrlings, concentrating on fluid specific details, or times of day that didn't match up with the present moment. And then there was the importance of _intent_ , being certain that both dragon and rider had a shared sense of the _when_ they were aiming to reach. No, best to let her see the records. Rahnis would never let him try it again if she thought he was taking risks! M'ton shook his head. “No. I've got the knack of it now, but it'd take too long to explain it all properly, and there are details you should read for yourself before you try it. Too dangerous, otherwise. I'll see if I can bring a copy of the records, next time we meet.”

Rahnis shifted in his arms, and looked up at him thoughtfully. “I just can't believe _Vallenka_ told you all this.”

It was hard, hearing so much bitterness and spite in her voice. Vallenka had given them this chance, shard it! He felt strangely angry, could feel the rushing of blood behind his eardrums, and abruptly his headache eased a little. “Shard it, Rahnis! I suppose you won't believe me about _her_ until you read it in a record either.” He hadn't meant to speak as harshly as that, but there was no taking the words back now. Tears welled up in her eyes as he watched. “I didn't mean....”

She shook her head, and rubbed her dark eyes with a knuckle. “No, it's just me. Part of me thinks this whole thing is too good to be true, but I _do_ believe Narnoth, and you. And it's not just that. I've not been feeling right ever since I moved north. I could probably do with some extra sun myself. It's so _cold_ there, M'ton. Even my dreams are cold. And we'd argued so much, I was beginning to think I'd lost you. Today, I was almost scared to see you. I thought you were....”

She lifted her gaze to meet his own, and he was suddenly aware of exactly what she'd been afraid of. That he'd called her here only to cut the ties between them, with a callousness that even Vallenka would envy.

“Never that,” he said in a whisper, his voice close to breaking. “I love you, Rahnis.” Those were the words he should have used right from the start, really, the only ones either of them needed. Rahnis echoed them, and after that, neither of them spoke at all.

 

 

 

The sun was falling full on his face when he woke, but in spite of the warmth of the morning, M'ton found himself shivering.

“I thought I'd let you sleep a little. You looked terrible, M'ton. Worse than me, anyway.”

He looked round to find Rahnis perched on a low branch, weaving a second garland of leaves to match the one she was already wearing. “You never look terrible. Especially not like...that.”

She smiled impishly down at him. “You did say you could spare the time, didn't you?”

“Yeah.” Feeling a little groggy, he pushed himself up on his palms, and then staggered to his feet. His head swam a little at the sudden movement, but his headache was finally gone, completely so. “What time _is_ it, do you know?”

“You've not even slept an hour. Are you okay?”

M'ton shivered again. Probably he _had_ just caught too much sun – he'd better remember a hat next time, as well as some food – but there was always a chance he was coming down with something. And with Threadfall to fight, too! But then the moment passed, and he felt clear again, better than he had done all day. “I'm fine.” He hauled himself up onto the branch beside her, and kissed her thoroughly, sending her lap full of leaves fluttering down onto the ground. “Better than fine. I feel....” His words broke off into laughter. “Oh, Rahnis, I feel so _alive_! But I should go. Get Thread charred, get this report back to Vallenka...and then we can figure out when we can meet again.”

Rahnis grinned broadly back again. “I feel pretty good too, considering. Do you think she'll let you bring the actual records, next time? The one that mentions her too, if you can track it down.”

They laughed again together, as he hopped down from the branch to retrieve the rest of his clothes. Shirt, jacket, then the knots. He still hadn't quite got the hang of the new ones. “Would you help me with this?” She obligingly tumbled off the branch into his arms, and set to work straightening out the extra loops. It felt _right_ , shard it, like it never had when Vallenka did them. He kissed her goodbye, there beneath the trees, then jogged back down the sloping beach to Narnoth. Duty had to take priority now, and he was needed back at the Weyr, back in time to a moment very shortly after the one when he'd left. Two dragons by the star stones, and Vallenka on the ledge, half a step from Carth's weyr with her back turned, flamethrower prepped and ready. She, the Weyr, and Thread were all waiting for them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone thinks that M'ton's physiological response to timing is a little idiosyncratic, well, yes, it is. But only a little. Remember, we only have ONE clear canon example of a rider multiplying themselves more than once, and while Lessa's experience is a great anecdote, it's not enough to extrapolate across the board. (With Moreta, it's not clear to me how multiply layered her overlapping with herself was. I should probably go and re-read those passages again.) The Southern experiment and the other examples seem to suggest that some riders suffer a lot more than others, and in a variety of ways.


	12. Chapter 12

_Picture Ista in your mind_  
 _weyrs and ledges, bowl and sea._  
 _Can you place each dragon's ledge?_  
 _And every blooming forest tree?_

_Picture Ista in your mind_  
 _A pared-down Weyr beside the sea._  
 _You know the hour of the sun_  
 _But clouds may keep it shadow-free._

_Picture Ista in your mind_  
 _weyrs and ledges, bowl and sea._  
 _See the star-stones on the rim_  
 _and hold the skyline's geography._

_Picture Ista in your mind_  
 _And think of home beside the sea_  
 _Ignore the dragons on the rim,_  
 _the details of each ledge and tree._  
 _Dwell not on triviality_  
 _Safe passage draws on geography._

 

**Mid morning, 17.12.34**

**Ista Island**

 

Vallenka eased back on her straps, testing the play of the leather in a vain attempt to conceal her impatience. M'ton was surely more than ready to signal the Weyr to leave.

 _Soon_ , Carth supplied. _Narnoth bespeaks the weyrlings._

Well, that was all very nice for them, but Thread wouldn't wait on the weyrlings' leisure, nor on M'ton's. Unsurprisingly, he hadn't looked particularly rested when he'd got back to their weyr, the report she'd requested in hand. The fellis he'd taken for his headache didn't seem to have helped him much either. She'd told him otherwise on both counts, naturally. It was amazing, really, how much effort one man could put into trivialities, but far better that he spent his energy there than on any more of his insane schemes for reorganising her Weyr. Ista certainly hadn't attained its current status by subordinating itself to other Weyrs, tithing fighting dragons like so much livestock! She'd thought she'd put a stop to it already, but M'ton would insist on interfering again and again. The fool man didn't have the slightest idea of what was genuinely important when it came to running a Weyr, but she was rapidly growing less inclined to correct him: he'd only do _more_ damage if she did. M'ton had started to take N'essen's advice in some areas – finally! – but he hadn't yet figured out that his predecessor's pride was still badly bruised, and much of what N'essen had to say wasn't worth listening to. Although, that was hardly a recent development, Vallenka thought with a smile.

But perhaps she was being unfair. N'essen could fight Thread well enough – which was what M'ton was supposed to be doing, right now. She was just about to suggest a cutting remark for Carth to relay to Narnoth, when her queen alerted her to their imminent departure.

Several hours later, when the Fall was two-thirds over, she found herself comparing M'ton with N'essen a little more favourably. He, too, could lead a Weyr against Thread far better than most bronzeriders of her experience. It was actually rather impressive, given his appalling present condition. For however long M'ton lasted as Weyrleader, at least he'd honour Ista's duty to Pern in his leadership of the fighting wings. Changes in the Weyrleadership could be awkward times, especially as Carth would inevitably be grounded herself soon enough. With barely another month to go before the queen was too egg-heavy to lead the queens' wing on the lowest level, it was somewhat of a relief to know that Thread would be well-seared in her absence. Another time, she might even have considered encouraging Carth to let Narnoth catch her again, but that flight was a long way off. Perhaps, if M'ton-

Carth suddenly shrieked a warning, and backwinged in the air. _Daragoth calls! Narnoth is missing!_

_How? Where? You'd have sensed it if he'd been injured, or died._

_Of course I would. He went_ between s _ome minutes back, and has not returned. But no-one can find him. His Wing is in disarray. Rolpoth takes charge of the Flight, and Ulbrinth leads Narnoth's Wing. Minith has mop-up. It is strange. He is not lost, not yet. I can feel him too strongly, but I can't place_ where.

That was all the information Vallenka needed to hear. Keeping her thoughts tightly under control, Vallenka urged her queen forwards into a dive. _Quickly now, Carth-my-heart, before that thread escapes us. Timing's the only explanation. But by Faranth, if you can't find Narnoth easily, I fear they're living more than twice right now._

Carth's mind reeled with shock. _Has the Red Star taken their wits?_

 _What wits? I_ told _M'ton he shouldn't be timing it today! Of course he ignored me, but only a complete fool would double-up_ during _threadfall, instead of the hours beforehand._ Vallenka calmly leaned over Carth's neck and flamed the stray Thread they'd been chasing. _Can you find them?_ she asked, as the last of it dissipated into ash.

The dragon's mental voice was thick with reproach. _I can, now I know what they've done. He's in Boll,_ and _Ista,_ AND _Keroon._

_But which when is where?_

Carth ascended again, concentrating hard as she traced a wide arc beneath the fighting Wings. Vallenka had flamed her next target to char before the queen spoke again. _Narnoth is at Boll last, with Alaireth. He was in the other nows beforehand. They sleep!_

_And will he come back here? Did he go there from here, or come here from there?_

_I DO NOT KNOW! We will see. When he has left all the other nows, we will know then if they are no more in this one. Not before._

_Fool man. Inform the other Wingleaders that he is there, in Boll, but not the other places. We will deal with him. Timing remains restricted knowledge. He might be under a lot of pressure, but Threadfall is_ not _the time to be derelict of one's duty. Tell them that, that he's left us to visit with his weyrmate. The rest of us need to keep on fighting this Threadfall, and hoping for the best._

_I have touched Narnoth's mind. He wakes, and knows he must return. M'ton is awake too._

_Do not bespeak them. Knowledge of their peril would surely doom them outright._

Carth didn't answer. Vallenka could feel her stretching her mind lightly towards Narnoth even as she continued to concentrate on the demands of fighting Thread. They'd have their answer soon enough, and neither Weyrwoman nor Queen could afford to let the outcome take them unawares. High above, in spite of the relatively quick and smooth transfer of leadership to Rolpoth and L'daff, there was still some level of chaos in the ranks. Vallenka kept Carth listening hard, keen to ensure that Ista didn't make Sh'vek's mistakes. _She_ would not crumble merely because one axis of power had left the field of battle, and nor would anyone else in her Weyr if she had anything to say about it. Two other fighting queens able to back Carth up also made a difference, she had to admit. They supported the smaller dragons, bolstering their will and spirit, and could call back some of the stronger first-shift dragons if any extra help was needed. The minutes passed swiftly as the Weyr continued its fight. Vallenka's first awareness that something else had occurred was when Carth suddenly broke off her attack and called on Minith to take out the tangle that she and Vallenka had previously been heading for.

 _Narnoth is leaving?_ Vallenka asked. _Coming here, now?_

There was a note of pain in the dragon's mental voice as she replied. _No...they go back to our then, I am certain of it._

 _Oh, Carth. They may yet return. They might have skipped ahead_. Vallenka honestly doubted it, but until their deaths became fact, she'd do everything she could to shelter her dragon from the blow. Damn the man for causing Carth this hurt! M'ton could so easily have settled with doing what he was told and being content with what he had – he'd made a habit of doing just that for most of his life anyway. Instead, he'd flown blindly into misfortune after misfortune, and now he and Narnoth would both pay the ultimate price for the bronzerider's poor judgement. As if being alive in the same time more than once could ever be a _good_ thing to do, in spite what some short-sighted record-makers might have stated. Short-lived, too – there was a fardling good reason no-one remembered Weyrleader K'sin. How long would they remember M'ton and Narnoth?

An instant later, a jolt of pain ripped through her, an echo of Carth's heartfelt grief that resonated wildly through their shared bond. Vallenka let it wash through her, filling her heart and mind with love and strength for the only being that really mattered to her: her Carth, her golden, wondrous Carth, who was hurting almost too much to bear.

The queen's pain reached its peak as she opened wide her jaws to keen. _They ARE lost. They are no more!_

_I know. Oh love, I know. Grieve them now, but know you deserve better. If his affections had truly been yours...._

Carth sent back a heavy silence. Vallenka waited, patient and certain that the truth and Carth's natural pragmatism would soon begin to ease the queen's distress. It wasn't long before her dragon proved her correct, the pain of grief metamorphosing into resentment and rage, that her chosen bronze had dared to stray from her side.

 _I know._ Carth said. _They did not deserve us. And we have thread to fight! We fight!_

_That's my girl._

The long habit of Threadfighting soon eased Carth and the other dragons of the Weyr back into an effective fighting force, and before too long the last ashes of the trailing edge were wind-blown embers beneath them. _Give L'daff, K'mallo and the other Wingleaders word_ , Vallenka asked Carth. _We return to Ista, Wing-wise. Minith can oversee the sweeps with a Wing of her choice. What says Helleath on the injuries?_

_Only two serious, and one fatality other than Narnoth._

_That green in the first shift?_

_Parroluth, yes. And Helleath tells me that Alaireth awaits us at Ista. Her rider is quite distressed._

Vallenka was unsurprised. _I suspected she might show up. Send word to Ormaith, please. My brother should be present for this._ She pictured the long sweep of Ista Weyr tumbling down to the bay, the water dark and greyed beneath the overcast sky. Carth re-emerged from _between_ in an elegant glide, allowing Vallenka to easily survey the minor injuries being tended in the Weyrbowl. Relatively few of them, thankfully. The ranks of the Weyr's fighting dragons followed her in. Long turns of practise had them landing in orderly fashion behind her, even in the absence of a Weyrleader to guide them. The Weyrwoman unbuckled her flamethrower and tossed the apparatus to the usual ground staff who attended her, then dismounted smoothly. Gloves and wherhide jacket followed, freeing her fingers to manage Carth's fighting straps with more dexterity than covered hands allowed. By the time she was done, she knew she had an audience – Rahnis' ragged breathing would have given her away even if Carth hadn't already told her rider of the other weyrwoman's approach.

“Rahnis! What in Faranth's name are-”

The woman had the temerity to slap her, right there in front of Carth! Carth lunged around, bellowing, and knocked the girl off her feet almost before Vallenka's face had even started to smart. No dragon would stand for such an insult to their rider, least of all a queen.

 _Vallenka! How dare she! How_ dare _she_!

Vallenka lifted a hand to touch her sore cheek, and winced. It could have been worse, she supposed. “Get up, girl.” _Let her up, my heart_ , she instructed Carth.

Several dragonlengths away, Alaireth had started surging forward to protect her own rider. Carth rose onto her hind legs, hissing furiously, her wings outstretched, asserting her rage and dominance over her daughter. Vallenka could hear the gasps and cries of shock from the weyrfolk all around her, but there was no doubt in her own mind that Alaireth would back down. The girl was probably more bruised in ego than in body, after all. Sure enough, the other queen had scarcely halved the distance between them when she suddenly hunched back on herself, her eyes darting back and forth between Carth and her rider, teeth bared in impotent fury. _Well done, Carth. She knows her place, doesn't she?_ Vallenka turned her attention back to the girl. Another one who ought to know her place better than she did. As she watched, Rahnis slowly pushed herself up from the ground onto her knees.

“You...you did this to them!” the girl gasped, choking back tears as she struggled to find her wind.

“Oh, compose yourself, girl. He's hardly the first rider to come to grief _between_.”

“Compose myself? Faranth, Vallenka, M'ton is _dead_!”

“And what do _you_ intend to do about that?” She walked over and pulled Rahnis fully to her feet, grasped her firmly by one arm, and spoke low enough that only the pair of them would hear what she said. “He told you about timing, didn't he?”

Rahnis didn't answer, but the knowledge was right there in her eyes.

Vallenka sighed. “So. And you think it's my fault that he died from it, do you? M'ton had every right to see those records, and it was my duty to give him access to them.”

“You meant this to happen!”

“Of course I didn't!” Vallenka said with conviction. She'd _meant_ to exhaust him, no more than that: burdening him with the fatigue of excessive timing and however much make-work it took to keep him from interfering with her management of Ista. She'd _meant_ to see him resigning his knots in defeat before Turnover, with any prospect for holding rank again in the future ruined beyond repair. She let the honesty of her words flood through to Carth in a controlled burst, reassuring her queen that, as tragic as it was, M'ton's death was something that the man had brought upon himself. True, a fatal error on M'ton's part had always been a possibility – timing was dangerous even when you _didn't_ overstretch yourself – but he'd chosen to take that risk each and every time he'd sent Narnoth _between_ times. His visual, his choice...and if he'd been too blind to the warning signs to realise that he wasn't fit to visualise the inside of his own eyelids, that was no responsibility of hers. “I _warned_ him that timing was dangerous, and I strongly advised him not to do it.” A sure-fire way of getting results, that.

 _You mustn't blame yourself, dear Vallenka. You_ did _warn him of the dangers._

Even angered, her queen was a most perspicacious dragon. Vallenka relaxed a little, permitting Carth to smother the small knot of guilt the queen had sensed inside her rider's mind with layer after layer of love and trust and concern. Turning aside from Rahnis, Vallenka raised a hand in appeal towards her queen. “Oh, but Carth! It _was_ my fault! If he'd taken the time to study the records properly he'd have understood the risks for what they were. I knew what a cavalier, irresponsible attitude he had; I should have realised he wouldn't do more than scratch the surface; he's done little better with his other duties, after all.”

When Vallenka looked round, Rahnis was visibly shaking with emotion.

“How dare you! How dare you, Vallenka? Insulting him like that!” She was starting to raise her voice again.

_Carth, would you mind? It's been a hard day, and this is starting to grow tiresome._

“And you expect me to believe you had nothing to do with it? I-” Rahnis broke off with a gasp, echoed by an angry cry from Alaireth.

 _Harder, Carth._ “I don't _care_ what you believe,” Vallenka said slowly. “You're none of my concern.”

The grief in Rahnis' eyes was hardening into stubborn rage. Behind her, Alaireth was clawing the ground furiously. “If he can do it, so can I. I can warn him, can't I? Go back....”

The girl might have changed tack...but she was still heading right for the reefs. “But you _didn't_ ,” Vallenka said slowly, encouraging Carth to share the veracity of her words with the other queen. “You _know_ you didn't. I'll tell you what I know, what M'ton was too much of a love-sick fool to think through. It's restricted knowledge for a fardling good reason. It's a dangerous business, timing, and you can never, ever change what's happened. He's dead and keened for. Will you take Alaireth back to a when that you both know never was?” She barked out a laugh. “Do you want to join your lover _that_ badly?”

Rahnis broke down, all the fighting spirit in her eyes vanishing in an instant. Alaireth took two steps forward, then stopped, desperately wanting to reach her rider but not quite willing – yet – to dare Carth's displeasure. If Rahnis _had_ been holding her queen back before...yes, it was best to keep the upper hand there.

 _Let Alaireth through to her, Carth_. Leaving the girl to sort herself out, Vallenka returned to Carth's side. Her queen's eyes were still whirling red and purple with rage and distress. _Easy now. I'm well, Carth-my-love. See?_ Vallenka reached up to stroke one of the queen's eye ridges, and steadily the whirling of Carth's eyes slowed, the darker colours steadily shading back into their usual blue. By then, a number of other riders were beginning to gather around. N'essen and K'mallo were there of course, as was M'ton's wingsecond and several of the Weyr's usual gossipy busybodies.

 _Ormaith has arrived, too_ , Carth told her.

 _Where? Oh, I see him. Good. Sh'vek should hear this too_. Leaving Carth settled watchfully on the ground, Vallenka walked over to join the waiting bronzeriders. “What an awful event that was.”

“Aye, Weyrwoman,” N'essen said. “But what happened? Do you think the man cracked? We all knew he wasn't finding the Weyrleadership easy, but-”

Vallenka gestured him to silence, and let her voice carry. “Ask _her_ what caused him to lose his wits.” She glanced round to check on Rahnis. The girl was clinging to her dragon's head, her body wracked with quiet sobs. Not her problem, though she hoped that Sh'vek would have the sense to remove her from Ista sooner rather than later. “Some acts are inexcusable. Abandoning an entire Weyr – during Threadfall, of all things! – is surely one of the worst of them. Especially as it was the single part of the job he _wasn't_ failing abysmally at.”

“No!” N'essen tutted his lips. “And he was in Boll, was he, with Rahnis?”

 _Trioth asks if Narnoth was timing,_ Carth said. _N'essen will support you as you require._

 _Oh, he will, will he? With an injured dragon who won't be flying again for at least another month? No, L'daff seems to be doing fine right now, and K'mallo will step up quickly enough if L'daff lets him see his chance. N'essen will have to try much harder than that if he wants to lead Ista again._ Vallenka smiled grimly, and nodded at her brother as he joined the group. He'd heard all she'd said, she could see it in his face. Dragon gossip would surely have supplied the rest. “Why, yes,” she said, “M'ton preferred Boll to fighting Thread over Nerat.” _Give Trioth the truth, Carth, and Ormaith too. M'ton read about timing in the records and ignored all the warnings._

“Why didn't he get back here?” K'mallo asked. “What killed them? I've asked, but no-one saw them return, so I don't think Thread got them.”

Sh'vek cleared his throat. “Weyrling mistake, I imagine. Like my sister says, he didn't _want_ to be there. Whatever visual he gave Narnoth, he must've contradicted it badly on some other level.”

“Most like,” Vallenka said, and sighed loudly. “Ista will survive. But please, Sh'vek, will you remove that nuisance of a girl from my presence? The rest of you, inside. We'll continue things there.”

The Istan bronzeriders hurried off, but Sh'vek held her gaze.

“A moment of _your_ time, Vallenka, if you can spare it,” Sh'vek said.

Carth was silent in her mind; whatever questions her brother had, he wasn't content to ask them privately via their dragons. She raised an eyebrow in query. “So?”

He stepped closer, watching his Weyr's new weyrwoman all the while, and lowered his voice to a monotone mutter. “I want the truth. What really happened, not what Carth thinks, and certainly not what you'll be telling your Weyr later.”

“I don't see that it's any of your business, really.”

“Aside from the fact that you were supposed to send me a functional weyrwoman? The timing was your idea, wasn't it?” Sh'vek waited, finally accepting her silence as the assent that she'd never admit to aloud. “So. And this wasn't the first time, was it?”

Vallenka shook her head. “Apparently not.”

“Even so, I find it hard to believe that they lost themselves like that, nor that they intentionally left the Weyr during Fall.” He gazed at her thoughtfully. “I know that look. What am I missing? Tell me, sister.”

“Interval before last, Weyrleader K'sin. He managed three Turns as Weyrleader by Ista's count, and a whole month longer than that by his own.”

Sh'vek pushed the idea aside in the air with an arm. “We've all doubled up like that, all of us who know it's possible. Perhaps not for so long. So, he was lousy at it.”

She shook her head again. “Try 'tripled', Sh'vek. And even that misses the mark.”

“Didn't he...?” Sh'vek looked away, back towards Rahnis. “You didn't warn him about the dangers of doubling up on yourself, did you?”

“I told him it was dangerous.”

“The specifics?”

“He never asked. His choice, his loss.”

“His death.” Her brother slowly shook his head. “ _Your_ choice. You might have told me what you were about. Faranth knows, you've set my Weyr back badly enough by what you've done. And to add _timing_ to the mess she's in?”

“She's none of my responsibility now.”

“She was already in a pretty fragile state. I've been pushing her, you know that. Rumour even has it that she...no, like you said, that's none of your responsibility. She'll fly back with me and Ormaith, and we'll deal with it today.”

Oh ho! Vallenka could figure that riddle out easily enough. Rumour could be wrong, but Sh'vek certainly wouldn't want the girl grounded, would he? “Her loss, your choice.”

Her brother lifted his chin and shouted across the bowl. “Rahnis! Get yourself over to Ormaith. You're in no fit state to fly right now.” With a sigh, he pulled his gloves out of his belt and wriggled his fingers into them. “Fardling things. I had better things to do with my time today than deal with a mess like this, you know.”

Vallenka shrugged. “The timing? I wouldn't worry about it, brother. Whatever M'ton told her, it wouldn't have been of much use anyway, and she'll never try it on her own now. Maybe you should thank me. At least you won't have her pining for home any more.”

“That's not the point.” He shot a quick glare at her over his shoulder as he walked away to deal with Rahnis. She hadn't moved an inch.

Vallenka turned her back on them both, and began the walk back to her weyr, and her own responsibilities. _Tell me when they've gone, Carth, then off you go to bathe. I'll join you when I'm done with the wingleaders._ They wouldn't detain her for long, and then she could join Carth for a good long dunk in the sea. That was what she needed, to wash away the trials of the day and the stench of Fall. She'd feel properly clean again soon enough.

 

 

 

**END OF PART 1**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. It looks like the first POV character has bitten the dust... Pat yourself on the back if you saw this coming before it was obvious. ;-) (And if you did, why not see if you can spot some of the other plot-hints for upcoming story developments littered through the earlier chapters?) 
> 
> If you're happy with interpreting M'ton's job title in a rather specific and non-Pernese way, you can take the events of these last two chapters as a nod to the story's title. Or, you can continue to see the title as referring to F'ren from Sh'vek's perspective, as the person to blame for the death of the weyrling queen 19 turns previously. Or, you can start to worry about whether I'm using it as a noun or a verb...and whether I'm done with that archive warning tag yet. ;-)
> 
> No-one is safe! *evil laugh*
> 
> Just FYI, new chapters will be going up weekly during December. 
> 
> Also, please comment! Please? *puppyeyes*


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Busy weekend, so this chapter's going up early. :-)

_Let me tell you what I know_   
_Our wingleader's got to go._   
_Left, right, on we go._   
_That's right, got to go._   
_Let me tell you what I know_   
_Our wingleader's got to go._   
_When he leads our wing between_   
_All our trousers need a clean_   
_Left, right, that's it._   
_Both legs, full of shit._   
_When he leads our wing between_   
_All our trousers need a clean_   
_He's so bad at fighting thread_   
_Won't be long before we're dead_   
_Left, right, all dead,_   
_That's right, all dead._   
_He's so bad at fighting thread_   
_Won't be long before we're dead_

 

**Mid morning, 3.13.34**

**High Reaches Weyr**

 

F'ren walked slowly through the empty Weyrling barracks. It had seemed an enormously cavernous space when he and the other new weyrlings had first brought their newly-hatched dragons inside and found the bunks and ledges they'd been assigned for the next Turn or so. By the end of their training, the place had been so crowded that, some nights, the Weyrlings barely needed bedfurs at all. Once, they'd even gone out and brought snow in from outside, hoping to cool the place down. It might have worked, only they'd ended up fighting with it instead. Even the dragons had got involved. Audrealle had been most put out at missing the fun, he remembered, in spite of the fact that Dilvith had long been too large to fit into the barracks by then. Not that she'd minded missing out on the sevenday they'd spent scrubbing mouldering walls, or re-painting them again afterwards.

Simpler times, with simpler problems. It was almost twenty Turns to the day since he'd Impressed Trath, but very little of what he saw had changed since then. Some things – some people – never even got the chance. A'minek and Audrealle hadn't survived their weyrlinghood. Nor K'ree, D'jen, I'law and Gr'max, who'd also died _between_ , Winalla and T'taggle, both caught by Thread, and R'slak, who'd managed to break his neck in a fall. Then there'd been that lad who'd Impressed the little odd-looking brown from the runt-egg, though that pair had only spent the one night in the barracks before being moved to the infirmary. Two nights later, the other weyrlings had been told that the boy had taken his own life in distress after the dragon had died. Trath and the other dragons had been too young, too simple of thought to feel the brown's death as strongly as they would those of other dragons, later on, and most of the young riders had been equally unconcerned. _Their_ dragons were fit and hale, and besides, they'd all of them live forever.

Idiots. F'ren dropped the basket of glows he was carrying onto the nearest bunk, and tested the wall with his belt knife. Several large flakes of paint came free, along with the plaster behind, all tumbling loose like snow. This part of the barracks was well overdue for some remedial work. Much like his Wing, really, though that was perhaps a little unfair on the barracks wall. It, at least, wasn't trying to get him killed.

 _Not yet,_ Trath said, _but if you keep poking it like that..._

The dragon's humour was flat and bitter, and did little to ease their shared tension. It had been a constant, gnawing presence for both man and dragon, ever since their narrow escape from the full brunt of Benth's flame during the previous Threadfall.

_Where under the Red Star did we go wrong, Trath? Where?_

_Nowhere that I remember. We are who we are._

_That's probably the problem_. There was no avoiding the fact that Sh'vek was doing everything in his power to put F'ren and his Wing in harm's way – and even Snowfall's darkest glows weren't so stupid that they couldn't see it. It would have been bad enough trying to knit them all together into an effective fighting force under any circumstances. The better riders were all cronies of Sh'vek, and as for the rest.... Some had more potential than others, and that was the kindest way of putting it. He still had hopes that he could manage it, but not the way things were now, with the Wing already fracturing under the pressure of flying the most dangerous parts of threadfall, and the most onerous sweeps. It was getting to the point where Sh'vek's riders were the ones he trusted most; at least he _knew_ where their loyalties lay, and they knew – or hoped – that the Weyrleader would look out for them in turn. P'lok was only the first of his wingriders to start to show signs of broken nerves. Fear, despair and desperation: those were the companions that flew with them in every Threadfall, and would be for as long as F'ren led the Wing. Really, getting rid of him was the obvious solution. Perhaps he should be surprised that there'd only been two attempts on his life so far?

_Two that we know of._

F'ren shook his head, and grimaced in distaste. _Whoever came up with this last one, they were much smarter about it than M'dex was with that sack of firestone. As if anyone would believe that he'd simply dropped it! Shells, you know what? If only Terbroth had been injured instead of Zallackuth, we'd have had M'dex as our catcher instead of J'an, and been perfectly safe twice over._

_We're safer now. We live, and we know who we can't trust._

_Some of them. We still don't know who coordinated yesterday's idiocy._

In spite of the added pressure of taking on the leading edge on the upper level, Snowfall had fought creditably well. The biggest problem F'ren had faced had been sustaining Trath's own flame. J'an, seated behind F'ren, hadn't had much of a problem catching full sacks of firestone, but when it came to tossing individual stones close enough for Trath to snatch out of the air, the brownrider's aim was decidedly off. The loss of a sizeable part of each sack, falling wasted to the ground, was telling. Even with Trath's best efforts – the bronze dragon sacrificing reaction time for efficient flaming by powering upwards to meet each Thread as it fell – they'd had to make their second resupply with the Weyrling Wing well before the first shift was over. On both occasions, F'ren had got Trath to call T'been and Benth in to take their place temporarily. Normally, he'd have brought one of his seconds up front, but T'been had asked – no, demanded! – an opportunity to prove himself and his bronze earlier that day. As the Wing had been managing their assigned sector of the Threadfall relatively well and the prevailing winds had remained steady, it had been an easy decision to make, though surely not a predictable one.

Except someone _had_ anticipated him. Whoever had been behind it, the trick had been cleverly planned: so well, in fact, that he couldn't be absolutely certain that there'd been any malicious intent behind the incident at all. But it hadn't been their first close call, and too many doubts and questions circled in his head for him to easily put it down to coincidence and his own growing paranoia.

They'd paused alongside the Weyrlings barely long enough to stoke Trath's flame, staying in constant communication with the rest of the Wing all the while. Everything had seemed in order: Trath had confirmed Snowfall's status with both Wingseconds, given Benth his order to return to his usual position, and lastly taken an up-to-date visual of the Threads falling ahead of the Wing from both Vorth and Lirroth, his flanking dragons during the first shift. F'ren had already been holding their desired position relative to the two dragons in his mind. It wasn't their usual placement relative to the rest of the Wing, but instead a little beneath it, giving Trath extra room in which to rise to meet the next falling Threads. F'ren had decided on the tactic earlier in the Fall, right after their first firestone resupply, when it had become abundantly clear that J'an's aim wasn't going to improve any time soon. A small detail, but perhaps a crucial one. Trath had taken them _between_ as confidently as ever. And then they'd emerged, to flames engulfing the airspace ahead of them, and to Lirroth's shrieking, first in warning, then in pain.

As fast as Trath's reactions had been, blinking them instinctively back to the safety of the Weyr before returning a second time to their Wing, F'ren knew that they owed their lives to Lirroth and St'larna. Somehow, she'd recognised the near-fatal configuration of all four dragons, just barely in time enough for Lirroth's frantic backwinging to change their relative positions and spare Trath's life. Benth had been beside himself over his error, afterwards, and there hadn't been the slightest hint of duplicity in the dragon's mind. F'ren couldn't be quite as certain of T'been, but even the other bronzerider's excuses rang true. Flaming one last Thread before they returned to their place in the Wing, clearing the skies for their Wingleader, showing him what a good job they could do – all of it was plausible enough. Bronzeriders were supposed to show some independence in their actions, and had T'been managed what he'd claimed he'd set out to do, F'ren would have happily commended him for it. They'd disobeyed their order to return to their place in the Wing, true, but how was Benth to know that Trath would emerge from _between_ in almost exactly the worst spot? How, indeed? And who could have predicted that Avret and Vorth would choose that same moment to surge forward, chasing down a Thread that ought to have been left for the lower Wings, and changing Trath's point of return in the process? Avret had blamed Benth, saying that taking on the nearer Threads would have been too risky for her dragon. Greens _could_ be buffeted about in the air by the larger dragons, true – but to the best of F'ren's knowledge, Vorth had never complained of it before that day.

All in all, two seemingly innocent decisions and a bit of bad luck had come horrifically close to claiming four lives. If it had happened to anyone else, F'ren would have willingly ascribed the whole mishap to sheer bad luck. Unfortunately, he didn't have the luxury of being just anyone. He was Snowfall's Wingleader, and he was stuck with them and they with him, for as long as everyone managed to stay alive. Flexing his ruined hand, F'ren wondered what the going odds were for him and Trath surviving the winter. There was always _someone_ sick-minded enough to wager on such things.

 _We could ask for a transfer again,_ Trath suggested.

F'ren shook his head. _You don't remember what happened last time, do you?_ Not that he expected Trath to remember his most recent request, not eight or nine turns after the event. The details still rankled. He'd been wingsecond for Cloudburst under L'sard at the time. Kiath had risen to mate, and Trath had been as close to catching her as he'd ever managed when the Weyrleader had landed a _very_ low blow on F'ren's groin. The shock had been more than sufficient to distract Trath from his pursuit, injuring the bronze in the process...but it hadn't been enough in itself to push F'ren into asking for a transfer. The tipping point had come a sevenday later when Sh'vek had insisted they resume fighting thread before Trath was fully fit. Trath's injury had been exacerbated within the first hour, seriously enough that they'd needed Kiath's help to get back to the Weyr. Knowing they'd been lucky to survive that Fall at all, F'ren had requested a transfer that very night.

Sh'vek had laughed in his face.

F'ren shifted his left foot, and used his heel to grind the largest fallen chunk of plaster into dust. _We could ask him again, but we'd only be worse off if we did. Sh'vek would do the exact same thing as last time: accuse me of being too cowardly to shoulder my responsibilities, strip me of my rank, and keep us fighting in Snowfall until one of the other Weyrs decides they_ want _a useless, insubordinate, one-armed, dead-weight bronzerider in their ranks. Or until thread eats some more of me._ Unbidden, he saw it all again. The greasy colours in the thickening grey strand, the flash of redness when the pain had first bit in....

_F'ren. Stop thinking about it._

_I know which outcome Sh'vek would prefer. Probably the more likely one, too, the way things are going._

_Stop it._

Squeezing his eyes closed, F'ren concentrated on his breathing and forced the memory of his scoring out of his mind. Shard Tarkan and all his talk of accepting that it had happened! Wasn't it enough that he had to see it in his scars every single day, without re-living it in his head as well?

 _You wouldn't_ have _to relive it if you didn't keep thinking about it,_ Trath reminded him. _And nor would I._

_I'm sorry._

If nothing else, at least it brought the rest of his problems back into perspective. A grim thought, but a true one. Thread was a mindless killer, and he knew exactly what to do about it: flame as much of the foul stuff as possible. What to do about Snowfall, now _that_ was the real problem. _Perhaps when we fight Thread tomorrow, we should ask Delene to listen to the Wing for us._

_None of the dragons lied to me. I'm certain of it, F'ren._

_I know. I just wish I could say the same thing of their riders._ Who _could_ he trust in his Wing, and how far? And if he couldn't trust his Wingriders, how could he possibly inspire them to trust _him_?

 _I trust you_ , Trath told him.

A wave of guilt washed over F'ren. Trath had never once complained to him about the consequences of his ongoing antagonism with the Weyrleader, and the bronze had always been confident that together they could surmount any and all of the challenges they'd faced – as they had done, time and time again over the last two decades. There wasn't a dragon in the Weyr to match Trath, and if F'ren had once harboured doubts over his own worth, he'd set those aside Turns ago. But ever since-

_No. Do NOT think that, F'ren. You have never once acted to endanger me, especially not then._

_Shard it, Trath, just look at me! Look at what I've earned for us, look at our Wing, look at the whole fardling Weyr._

Trath's response was nothing more than a steady, almost overwhelming sense of pride in his rider.

_I don't deserve you, Trath._

_No? Then you owe me the green of my choice. Perhaps two._

_Incorrigible dragon! Very well; just so long as neither of them is Vorth._

_Hmph. Credit me with_ some _sense, F'ren_.

F'ren sighed, and scuffed away the last of the powdery debris with his foot. His Wing would be assembling in the bowl outside the barracks even now, and there was a fine line between making them wait for him and having them think him tardy. He collected the glow basket and made for the barracks door. _Are they all there now, Trath?_

_The old ones have just arrived. But Olbith is still on his ledge waiting for his rider to be ready._

_Call him down. I don't care if W'rint's still half naked._

_They come. Oh, and Simpeth is still here. I asked him to leave with the rest of the dragons, but he refused to go._

_Oh? Well, we can't be having that._ F'ren stowed the glow basket in the alcove beside the door, and shuttered it. _Show me_ , he thought to Trath, and placed his good hand on the latch of the small, inset wicket-gate. The riders of his Wing were milling around in several loose groups. Wingsecond D'barn was standing with his son and several other young riders of the same age. H'rack, F'ren's other Wingsecond, was leaning nonchalantly against Simpeth's thigh, and apparently flirting with _both_ Ludrenne and Samdra. Samdra's weyrmate B'ly was glaring at the Wingsecond from the far side of the group; another potential problem for him to worry about, there. Avret and T'been were standing conspicuously far apart from each other, but there were certainly no obvious gatherings of conspirators. The biggest group was busy watching M'dex and G'treb juggling half a dozen small seed-bags between them. No, there was nothing at all wrong with M'dex's coordination.

F'ren lifted the latch, and stepped through the wicket-gate. “Snowfall. Form up, clutch seniority.” P _ass the word to Aballath that Br'fort's up front, Trath. He won't have heard that._ Chances were, P'colt or R'mindro would have ushered him into the right spot anyway, but there was no harm in simple courtesy. Br'fort had fought Thread for as long as it had been falling, and if his ears were failing him, at least the rest of his mind and body were not.

The Wing grudgingly assembled into an uneven column, the three old greenriders at its head. Wingsecond D'barn was next in line, beside two ex-Flamestrike riders. F'ren paced down the length of the column, past his own clutch-mates, none of whom liked him much. Further on, Denna was the first to greet him by name, a far-too-inviting smile on her dark face. He'd liked her a lot, several Turns back, before she'd weyrmated briefly with someone else. Sh'vek had known all that, of course.

Ignoring the attraction he still felt for her, F'ren looked around for H'rack. He ought to have been waiting in line beside Denna, but instead was still chatting to Samdra at the far end of the column. “H'rack seems to be missing, Denna,” he said softly. “Fetch him into line, would you?”

Even walking away from him, Denna could be sharding distracting. F'ren tore his eyes away and took his time walking down the rest of the line, trying vainly to identify who wanted him dead the most. The faces that met his own were variously blank, bored, resentful, disparaging and outright gormless. Things improved a little as the riders grew younger, and fear and enthusiasm became added to the mix – at least where the riders looked him in the face at all. Last in line were the four most recent Weyrlings – Samdra, B'ly, P'lok and St'ram – and his Wingsecond, H'rack. Young St'ram was grinning eagerly, P'lok...less so. But they were all still new enough into the Wings that R'fint's good training held true: all of them fell silent and straightened to attention as he drew close.

“A word with you, F'ren?” H'rack said.

Adding his Wingsecond to the 'resentful' group but otherwise ignoring him, F'ren gave the younger riders a quick nod of acknowledgement. “I think you four will do particularly well today. Just so you know, I'm expecting you to show up some of the older riders, myself included. Try not to gloat too much, eh?”

He stepped away from the column, pondering his next move. It would alienate H'rack even further, but damn, the man knew he was pushing things.

 _Simpeth says that H'rack says that he was only doing his job_ , Trath told him, _and he will_ not _be dictated to by a greenrider, even if you_ are _sleeping with her_.

 _He'll be dictated to by whoever I choose, whatever he wants to imagine about them. Tell Simpeth he can get back to his weyr, and if H'rack wants to join him, he can. We're not flying anywhere right now._ He met H'rack's gaze, fairly certain of how the man would decide. He could scarcely report back on Snowfall's activity to Sh'vek from his weyr. Sure enough, Simpeth launched himself back into the air alone, but before H'rack could move, F'ren shook his head. “No, stay where you are, H'rack. T'been! Ready to show me what else you can do?”

“Sir?”

“We're starting with a lap and a bit of the Weyrbowl, standard pace, ending at the lake. You can take the lead, and choose our chant. As the rest of you still have two functioning arms, I think you can manage to keep the full half dozen sacks of stone in the air as we go. Pick whoever you want to fetch them from beside the Weyrling barracks. Watch the older riders – we'll be pausing for sprints and formation drills as we go, but if it looks like someone needs a rest, just pass me the word.”

“That...sounds a lot like a Weyrling drill, sir.”

“Really?” F'ren drawled. “And there I was thinking you'd all forgotten them. Go on then, get them started.”

With his Wing on the move, F'ren kept pace with them off to one side. Weyrling days were long past for most of his riders, but while some of them remembered the drills relatively well, some of the more important lessons seemed to have fallen by the wayside. Questioning decisions on the ground was one thing, but it could easily be fatal during Threadfall. The physical condition of some of his riders was also pretty sorry. C'tis had apparently won the sprint race at the High Reaches Gather the same turn he'd Impressed Yath, but nowadays he was lucky to manage a slow walk in a straight line. Young E'dar proved fastest in the end, beating Sk'barn by the smallest of margins. R'dallan and K'bud between them saved the Wing from making a complete mess of the first few sack-tossing patterns. Ludrenne was hopeless – perhaps explaining why she was so conservative with Frynth's flame during Threadfalls – and M'dex suddenly seemed to realise that he was performing a little _too_ well, and mis-threw a sack of stone at W'rint to compensate, knocking the young bluerider clear off his feet. F'ren surprised himself by getting a laugh out of the whole Wing at that point, curtly chiding M'dex for forgetting where his Wingleader was standing. He moved them onwards to the lake after that, and set them to formation work on foot. Sk'barn, St'larna and P'lok did best with those, along with M'dex and the Wing's Searchrider, A'tobin. Overall though, the Wing as a whole made a shoddy display. They had a growing audience of riders and Weyrfolk by then – as well as B'risten's gang of Weyrlings. Sure enough, it wasn't long before the Assistant Weyrlingmaster wandered over.

“Missing your Weyrling chores, F'ren? Or did you just forget what you were _meant_ to be doing with them?”

F'ren shook his head. “How would you rate them?”

“I think you're wasting your time with them, that's what. Linnebith's Weyrlings could do better in their sleep, half a turn back.”

Half a turn back, the weyrlings' dragons had scarcely been out of their shells, but F'ren wasn't going to argue with B'risten over it. The man had missed the point of what he'd been doing entirely. Physical fitness, mental agility and a good sense of spatial awareness were only a part of what Weyrling training was about, and if it were _only_ those things his Wing needed to improve on, he'd have stuck with standard Wing drills. For the rest, well. He could lecture them on their failings all day long, and they still wouldn't take it in. Snowfall needed to _listen_ to what he said, and that just wasn't happening, not yet. Still, there was more than one way to hatch an egg. He'd get his message across, somehow. B'risten could help with that - the man was hopelessly predictable. “Well, that almost sounds like a challenge. Care to place your marks on it?”

“Ha! They're far too advanced for these kind of games. What'll you be doing next, squeezing their dragons back into their shells?”

B'risten had pitched his voice to carry. Laughter rippled through the audience, growing more widespread as Snowfall fumbled the next pass of firestone sacks.

“Now there's an idea,” F'ren said. “Nothing like a fresh start.”

“You _have_ cracked.” B'risten spat to one side, and walked back to his Weyrlings.

F'ren turned back to his wing, and beckoned H'rack over. “I think we've embarrassed ourselves enough for one day. We'll head back to the Weyrling barracks now. I've borrowed the smaller teaching room. Get the Wing into our standard order this time, and for Faranth's sake, no more of T'been's songs about girls. Forget about keeping the sacks in the air this time. Give one apiece to T'forgil, M'dex, M'shear and W'rint. A'den could do with one too, and the last might at least keep Ch'rewn from fooling around too much.”

“More Weyrling lessons?”

“Something like that.”

He watched the riders rearrange themselves, and joined St'larna, Avret, F'sigger and Tr'laggan at the head of the column as they moved off. H'rack jogged ahead of them to set the pace, and started his first chant. Hearing it, F'ren barked out a laugh. He hadn't heard this one since his own Weyrling days. Beside him, Avret shot him a wary look, uncertain of the wisdom of singing along. No doubt there'd be other riders with similar concerns, though he was pretty sure that most of the Wing was joining in lustily. He added his own voice to theirs on the second line, and was pleased to see H'rack almost lose his footing on the icy ground. H'rack had balls, that was for sure, but the intended insult behind his choice had missed by a wide margin. It might even serve to remind the Wing that a _competent_ Wingleader was worth his dragon's weight in Marks. Even better, he was pretty sure he could cross H'rack off his list of suspects – the man had all the subtlety of...of a well-aimed sack of firestone.

Back at the Weyrling barracks, F'ren stood to one side to let the Wing file through the door ahead of him, and then followed them in. “H'rack, D'barn, get those shutters open, would you? The rest of you, grab a patch of floor and sit down.”

Slowly and reluctantly, Snowfall settled onto the ground. F'ren didn't push the point when both of his Wingseconds opted for the comfort of staying standing - a triviality like that wasn't worth the bother. And then he waited, long enough for the first few riders to start shifting uncomfortably on the cold, hard rock. For a wonder, they even stayed silent for him. He gave them another moment and a collective glare before he finally started to speak.

“I don't think we _need_ to review your collective performance out there, do we? You'll hear enough about it from the other Wings. It does make me worry though. If you've _all_ forgotten that much of your weyrling training – except those of you whose _dragons_ still remember the details, and can prompt you as necessary – what else is slipping your recall? I'm _this_ far from sending all of you to sit in on all the weyrlings' classes.”

He walked over to the wall-slate which he'd already marked up with the standard grid for recording threadfighting performances, picked up a chunk of chalk from the pot on the floor beside it, and lobbed it at St'ram.

“St'ram. Come up here. I want a brief summary of our performance over the last three Threadfalls we fought.”

H'rack moved forward. “F'ren, that's my-”

F'ren cut him off with a look he'd learned from old L'sard, glad to find that the trick still worked.

“Even the best riders can run out of luck during threadfall, H'rack. Personally, I like having contingency plans. Humour me.”

St'ram looked at F'ren for permission to continue, and started scratching numbers on the slate. “Yesterday we had two major injuries, and three scores treated back at the Weyr. And, um...and....”

F'ren finished the sentence for him dryly. “And T'been nearly got you J'garray as your next Wingleader. Yes.”

A few of the riders laughed nervously. J'garray was a joke that even _they_ wouldn't take seriously, but why _should_ their next Wingleader mean any improvement for them? They needed to realise that. Sh'vek had chosen what he saw as the dregs of the Weyr for F'ren's Wing. But did any of them see the insult in it? No, they all blamed F'ren for their current woes, and Sh'vek was still the lone saviour who could spare them the misery of a short life and a grisly death in F'ren's company. Idiots. “We gave Windfire a full tithe of Thread,” he added. “Lucky for them we only had crackdust the day before that. Take us back to the north Crom Fall, St'ram.”

“Ummm... we had the leading edge again, lower level. Bad updraughts over the ridges, only minor scores and char-burns.”

“And...?”

“Twelve burrows,” he added weakly. “They _were_ only small ones. And all up in the mountains.”

“Well, _that_ makes it all right then. Carry on.”

“Er, the double got rained off, and we had five minor... no, six minor scores on the 22nd, over Nabol. And fined for three burrows.”

“Very good, St'ram. You can sit back down.” F'ren turned to look across at his Wingseconds. “So, H'rack. Crom, I think we can share some of the blame with the flying conditions. For the Nabol fall, we need a different excuse, and I've given you a full sevenday to think about it. What's yours?”

H'rack reddened. “That clump was supposed to be Nooth's to flame, it was in her sector. It's not my fault her position was off. We flamed harder than anyone else in the Wing, sir, had the empty sacks to prove it.”

“The Wing, H'rack. What's your excuse for _the Wing._ Or are you forgetting that you hold some modicum of responsibility for it? _”_

“We flew where you put us, and fought what we could. If we'd been using the same formation as Flamestrike, Simpeth wouldn't have had to stop some of the greens and blues poaching the easy pickings. Nooth wasn't the only one. Ch'rewn was all over the fardling sky.”

Ch'rewn was up on his feet in an instant. “At least I didn't let any Thread past me!”

“Except when you weren't in your own assigned position! Who got it then? Do you even know?”

“J'lorval picked it up.”

Another rider – M'shear, a friend of Sk'barn – spoke up from the back of the group. “Yeah, J'lorval's picked it up all right.”

Embarrassed, J'lorval pulled a hand away from where he was scratching his crotch, and swore at the other rider. “You just wait, M'shear.”

Unsurprisingly, the Wing rapidly descended into a chaotic mess of blame and insults, and the odd shove that might soon build up into worse. F'ren left them to it for a few minutes, using the chance to gauge the different factions. There were personality clashes even amongst the riders vehemently loyal to Sh'vek, but some of the stronger cliques were uncharacteristically quiet. D'barn must've got word to his son to keep his head down. F'ren glanced at his other Wingsecond, and found the man watching him in turn, somewhat impatiently by the look of it. _I like him_ , F'ren thought at Trath. _He may disagree with me, he may be as much in Sh'vek's pocket as H'rack is, but at least he doesn't disobey_.

 _I don't think it's mutual_.

 _Ha!_ F'ren pushed himself away from the wall where he'd been casually leaning, and tried to pull the room to attention with a curt hand gesture, another trick of L'sard's that he wasn't sure if he'd managed to master yet...but perhaps he had. Perhaps a third of the room fell silent almost right away, and the rest followed quickly enough afterwards. “Your turn, D'barn. Do you think we should've used rising ranks like Sh'vek?”

“Not that, not across the full trailing sector of the 'fall. Grid pattern seemed sensible enough to me. Can't think why it didn't work.”

F'ren scanned the room. “Who _can_ tell me?”

Samdra raised her hand, weyrling-fashion. “Thread doesn't fall in grids?”

It was stating the obvious, and a long, long way from a complete answer, but they had to start somewhere. “Exactly. And with rising ranks above us, what we got was patchy and unpredictable. Grid gave us the coverage we needed, nothing more.” He lowered his voice, forcing them to listen. “You weren't fardling meant to stick to it rigidly, flaming only what came in reach. I can count on my fingers how many of you actually listened to my instructions – even now!”

He turned back to the wall-slate and wiped it clean with the rag pegged up beside it. Grabbing a new piece of chalk, he started to sketch. Diagonal lines across the length of the top half of the slate, to represent falling Threads. A rough, wiggly line at the bottom, to which he added a snow-clad mountain range, a few trees, and a bunch of stick-men for good measure. In the centre, he placed two cross-hatched bands, to represent the fighting Wings of the Weyr. “I want you all to think about this formation, what it attempts to achieve, and how it differs from the grid we used over Nabol.”

“That's not a formation, F'ren,” H'rack said. “It's...it's nothing at all!”

“Oh?” F'ren scanned the room until he found T'been. “Tell me, T'been. Where does our duty lie? Whose needs do we always put first?”

“Benth's of course. Our dragons.”

He left T'been's words to hang in the silence for a moment before he gave his own reply. “Of course. First and foremost, preservation of Trath's hide, and my own skin.” His coat was already off, and the shirtsleeves rolled up easily. He crossed his arms, baring the livid threadscore that would've cost him his left arm if Trath had been fractionally slower. Faranth, if he _did_ have to live with it, he'd sharding well use it! It made him want to vomit, seeing it, but he did what he could to channel his disgust back at T'been and the rest of the Wing. The young bronzerider looked suitably chagrined. “Want to try again?”

T'been ducked his head. “Pern, sir.” He sounded almost aghast.

“Yes. First and foremost, dragonriders serve _Pern_. To do that, we _must_ put our dragons' needs before our own at all times, that goes without saying.... And sometimes, the world will demand even larger sacrifices from us. Every time we fight Thread, _every_ time, your lives and those of your dragons are on the line. It's not about heroics, or flaming the most Thread, or whatever competitive nonsense the Weyr's obsessed with this month. It's about life and death. And I _will_ not see lives squandered unnecessarily. We're up there to do a job. To protect Pern, and each other. I have no interest at all in keeping myself safe if it comes at the expense of _this_ Wing failing in its duty.”

He stretched out his bad arm to point back at the wall-slate. “ _This_ is our duty, to clear the skies of Thread. _This_ is what _my_ choices as Wingleader boil down to. No, it _doesn't_ show the details – but neither does a grid, or rising ranks, or inverted vees or any other formation you've ever drilled with. The details are you, your dragon, and every last Thread in the sky. My job – and yours – is to make those details _count_. St'ram. Stand up again. I think you can tell me where we went wrong, can't you?”

“We didn't work as a Wing, sir.”

F'ren repeated the youngster's words. “We didn't work as a Wing. How many times a sevenday did R'fint drum that into you, St'ram?”

St'ram smiled. “Half a dozen sir, at least. So long as he thought we were paying attention. Otherwise it was twice that for sure.”

“We fly as a Wing,” F'ren reiterated, and sighed. Going by faces alone, he'd got through to maybe two or three of them at most. “Tomorrow, we have the leading edge on the upper level. Again. Depending on how far that weather front moves, we'll either have the last third of the 'fall rained off, or we'll be facing the worst fight of our lives. I'm going to bring the second shift in early, and first shift will stand ready in reserve. We'll drill the different options fully in the morning, but I want you all well aware of how fluid we'll have to be in the worst case. Does anyone have anything to add?”

Immediately, F'sigger rose to his feet. “What I'd say, _sir_ , is that we fly as a _Weyr_.”

F'ren gave him a sick grin. The point was well made, as barbed as it was. “Oh, absolutely. That's something for all of us to keep in mind. Perhaps one day, one of you can also explain to me how well Snowfall serves the Weyr, and Pern, as we are now....” He shook his head. “No. I think we're done here for now. I've decided to postpone the full inspection until first light tomorrow morning. We've got the Tillek coast sweep this afternoon, and the weather's good enough that I don't see why we can't make a wherry-hunt out of it. No sense cleaning straps beforehand, so make the most of the extra free time, all of you. J'an, St'larna – I'll have a quick word before you leave. D'barn, see them out.”

“Yes, sir. Wing: dismissed.”

He waited watchfully as the room emptied, then walked over to join J'an and St'larna. One last problem to deal with, and then he could start worrying about the next day's Threadfall properly. “J'an. I don't think the last few falls have done Zallackuth any favours, have they?”

The brownrider shook his head. “He's...he's found them quite distressing, sir.”

“He's not the only one, believe me. No. I'm relieving you as my left-arm man. You'd be better off taking him out of the Weyr yourself during Threadfall, get some training in. Nothing too strenuous. I'd like to be able to call on the pair of you before Turnover if I need to, but not for a full fighting shift for a while longer.”

The relief on J'an's face was clear. “I know we're not much of a...”

F'ren lifted his bad hand and gestured him to silence. “You'll be a fine, steadying influence for some of the more volatile greens in the Wing. Help me channel their acrobatics effectively, show them some of Zallackuth's precision.”

“And serve as a warning not to take Thread lightly?”

F'ren considered his own scars with a grimace. “Do any of us?” He looked over at St'larna, certain that she already understood what he was going to be asking of her.

“He can't throw firestone for shit, can he?” she said with a wry grin “Yeah, I'll catch for you, Wingleader.”

Shaking his head, F'ren looked apologetically across at J'an. “That, too.” He flicked his head towards the door, dismissing the brownrider. “Go on. See to Zallackuth. What of Lirroth, St'larna? How is he doing?”

She huffed out her breath. “The spar joint's still pretty swollen, but it doesn't bother him too much. Alaireth's been helping us with the worst of the discomfort. We'll not be flying for at least a sevenday, but Pakall reckons it'll heal up just as good as always.”

“That _is_ good news.”

“You know, I think I actually believe you.”

“How many others can I trust?”

She tilted her head thoughtfully, and mock-counted to one on her fingers. “There'll be more. I remember what you did with Cloudburst, F'ren. Besides, the best of us will be out of here pretty quick, eh? Even an _unnatural oddity_ like myself.”

F'ren winced. St'larna had never had an easy time of things since Impressing Lirroth, but you wouldn't know it to look at her. She'd been a senior Weyrling when he'd Impressed Trath, and had stayed that way while two clutches graduated to the fighting Wings ahead of her. Weyr-wide opinion of the fifty or so women riding fighting dragons in the High Reaches was varied. They were rarely accorded the same respect as the male riders, but for the bronzeriders especially their presence had its advantages. Strangely, the female greenriders seemed to have a better chance of surviving their first few Turns threadfighting than their male counterparts. Whether that was because they were better at it, more in tune with their female dragons, or because their Wings coddled and protected them, F'ren didn't know. Physically, very few of them could match the male riders, but greens at least didn't need to fight a full Threadfall, and took less time and effort to care for than their male siblings. The weaker riders... well, allowances were always made, and usually for the most obvious of reasons. None of that applied to St'larna, of course.

“I'd be sorry to lose you,” he said. “Trath and I, we're well aware we owe you our lives. Lirroth didn't deserve to get injured for it.”

“It could've been worse. Alaireth caught us pretty sharply. Nah, we're survivors, Lirroth and I.”

“I know. Go on then, get out of here.”

Halfway to the door, she stopped, and turned back to face him. “I had quite a talk with weyrwoman Rahnis, earlier.”

“Oh? Has she stopped crying yet?”

St'larna's eyes narrowed. “That's not fair, F'ren. You should talk to her. She may have a lot on her mind right now, but it's not just her own troubles. She's very concerned about the Wing.”

“She's not the first to feel that way, and she won't be the last. I'll think about it though.'' Leaving St'larna to make her own way out, F'ren walked back to the wall-slate and cleaned it off again. _What do you think, Trath?_

 _You_ had _been thinking of having Linnebith help bolster the Wing for us. Alaireth could do that just as well. Easier, even - she'd be flying the fall with us._

_Either way, it's an admission of weakness on our part._

_An honest one._

_And what will it do to Rahnis, seeing first-hand what Sh'vek intended her beloved M'ton to face? She's already in pieces. Didn't even leave her weyr to help get the Tillek tithe in, and I'd swear on your shell that Delene's wrong, and she's not simply shirking. Whatever her issue is, we do_ not _want her to start rubbing Sh'vek up the wrong way right now. She got away with it over the tithes, somehow. Damn it, why doesn't that happen when_ I'm _right about something? No, let's stick to Linnebith. Make it obvious to everyone that we're favouring her. Come on, get your lazy rump off the rim - we'll head back to our weyr, and I'll check your hide over for dry spots_. _I'll speak to Delene later, maybe drop a few hints to G'dil at the same time if he's there, find out how he feels about C'nir escorting Delene to that wedding at the Hold in five days time._

F'ren closed the door leading to the teaching rooms behind him, and watched Trath glide smoothly down to the bowl. His own scramble up onto the dragon's neck was considerably more awkward, but he was slowly starting to get accustomed to it. “What did you make of our drills, Trath?” he asked aloud.

 _Much the same as you, when I was watching_.

“And what else – or should I ask who – captured _your_ attention?” Fully expecting the dragon to fill his mind with any number of his favourite greens, Trath's answer, and the emotion invested in it, caught him by surprise.

_Baxuth was flirting with Alaireth again._

_Oh. You do remember why we can't..._

_Of course I do! But I don't have to_ like _it._ The dragon landed lightly on his ledge, and crouched down ready for his rider to dismount.

F'ren unbuckled the ridge-stays of his flying straps and slipped easily to the ground, the long pieces of leather following him loosely. _I'll just get that oil. Won't be long._ He walked past Trath's couch, and ducked past the heavy curtain veiling the darkness of the inner weyr. There was no need for light – he'd left his smaller oil-pot on the shelf above his clothes-chest, and he could find that easily enough in the dark. Three steps into the room, he stopped, adrenaline surging through his body. Something was wrong. Someone was here. “Who's here?” _Trath!_

 _I saw no-one_!

Light flared, from the direction of his bed, of all places. His bedfurs slipped away from Denna's body as she set the glow basket down to one side. “Hello, F'ren,” she said.

“Denna.” He reached out mentally to reassure Trath. If the dragon had been human, he'd likely have harrumphed and rolled his eyes. “How...?”

Denna tucked her legs beneath her and rose up on her knees, the glowlight casting appealing shadows over every contour of her body. The furs dropped even further, quite intentionally, F'ren was sure. Somebody groaned involuntarily. Ah, yes; that would be him.

“How did I get in here? Trath never pays Ulleth any attention outside of Threadfall, you know that,” Denna said. “Not unless you _ask_ him to.”

 _If you ask me_ , Trath told his rider as he settled down more comfortably on his ledge, _you're about to make an exceedingly poor decision._

What could he possibly say to that? F'ren shrugged off his coat, and started on his shirt buttons. _I know, Trath. Trust me, I know._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a very astute reader over at FF.net note that she was hoping that pride would indeed come before a fall. I think that's probably the biggest linking factor between the three primary POV characters: they all suffer from more than their fair share of hubris, albeit in different ways. 
> 
> Wing issues aside, F'ren gets cut some slack in this chapter. Lucky him! To balance things out, this chapter confirms that Rahnis got even more unlucky in the background, hence the updated tags (check the last lot of dialogue between Sh'vek and Vallenka if you're confused, and some of the conversation between Rahnis and Quaiya). Next chapter will appear next weekend - in which you'll get a new POV character and some very, very bad chemistry.


	14. Chapter 14

_Come together to the Gather_  
 _Holder, Crafter, Dragonrider_  
 _Check the wind and check the weather_  
 _Fly the Gather Flag on high!_

_Gather all your goods together_  
 _Make the journey safe and swift_  
 _Sell your wares for marks or barter_  
 _Fly the Gather Flag on high!_

_Eat together at the Gather_  
 _Meat rolls, redfruit, bubbly pies_  
 _Drink your fill from every wineskin_  
 _Fly the Gather Flag on high!_

_Gather round to hear the Harpers_  
 _Sing of danger and delight_  
 _Some songs new, and some old favourites_  
 _Fly the Gather Flag on high!_

_Dance together at the Gather_  
 _Lord or lady, drudge or child_  
 _Finest cloth or wherhide leather_  
 _Fly the Gather Flag on high!_

_See the dawn sun rise together_  
 _Rest those aching feet and heads_  
 _Find your bed or find another's_  
 _Fly the Gather Flag on high!_

_Come together to the Gather_  
 _Holder, Crafter, Dragonrider_  
 _Check the wind and check the weather_  
 _Fly the Gather Flag on high!_

 

**Morning, 6.13.34**

**High Reaches Weyr**

 

_Kind Delene! Beautiful Delene! Whatever would Maenida and I do without you?_

Delene blinked hard under the weight of Kiath's gratitude, and set Maenida's empty cup aside. The queen's mind was warm and bright, and there was no doubt that her emotions were heartfelt, but Delene felt like she was like being squeezed to the bones at times. She rubbed at her temples and looked down at Maenida. The Weyrwoman was smiling. “Kiath knows you're feeling more comfortable now. Is there anything else you need?”

Maenida's mouth opened and closed again, then settled back into the same slack smile. She closed her eyes, and gave her head a slight shake.

Delene _hated_ that smile. Until the fellis took Maenida under completely – and the same dose was taking longer and longer to do that, these days – Kiath would be almost unbearable. The fellis took away the Weyrwoman's pain, but it also blurred her thoughts, and Kiath would tug and push at Delene, using her to make sense of her rider's mind, clinging hard to both women until Maenida slept soundly enough to satisfy her. Delene would be squeezed and stretched and scoured, and she couldn't complain because complaining to Kiath only made things ten times _worse_.

The Weyrwoman's fellis-cravings were almost as bad, but in some strange way all of the discomfort actually seemed to make things easier for Kiath, at least for a while. When Maenida hurt, Kiath could hear and soothe her, and even if there _were_ still thoughts she couldn't hear properly, she didn't notice them anywhere near as often. Also, Kiath didn't make Delene feel what Maenida was feeling very often, only if the cravings got _really_ strong and Delene hadn't been quick enough with the next dose. Sometimes, Maenida would want more fellis far too soon, and then all three of them would be stuck in the Weyrwoman's misery of cramps and aches and sickness and shakes, until it was time for Tarkan's next approved dose, or until Kiath got her way and Maenida got her medicine early. That was what had happened today. Tarkan didn't like it when she gave in to Kiath's wishes, but _he_ didn't have someone else's queen screaming into his head. So what if it was too early? Better a draught of fellis than Kiath pestering the rest of the Weyr with her distress, or Maenida collapsing again.

Kiath pushed at her again, flooding her with Maenida's thoughts. Most of them were no more than senseless noise, but here and there amongst the confusion she managed to make out a few details. Sh'vek was there, looking ten turns younger but only slightly more handsome, and Hendra, then some faces she didn't recognise. Voices, too, but not distinct enough for her to know what was being said. Dragons darting and diving above the Weyr's herds. A Gather-dance, her own face, Maenida's memories of Kiath watching eggs in the Hatching Cavern while thick snow fell outside, just as it was falling today. Then more of Sh'vek, then Egritte and Rahnis and Delene again too, a confused repeat of the argument the three of them had had about the Weyr's livestock supplies earlier that day, when they'd thought Maenida was sound asleep. Gritting her teeth, Delene leaned mentally against Linnebith, and tried to reflect her best impression of the Weyrwoman back at Kiath. _She's fine, Kiath. She's just a bit worried about the shortages in the Weyr, and doesn't remember that we've solved that problem now. Reassure her if you can. She'll be asleep soon._

 _Yes_. _I do know that. And she's sure she'll be able to do more tomorrow. Perhaps she could go over the day's reports with you, after I've been oiled? Or walk as far as the Lower Caverns?_

_That would be nice, Kiath. I hope she can._

Delene pulled the quilted covers up, and tucked them in close against Maenida's arms. The routine hadn't changed much in the last month at all. Now that Maenida was asleep, Delene would attend to Kiath's needs until she woke up again, then supervise the weyrfolk who cleaned and dressed the Weyrwoman these days. After that, Delene would do her best to persuade Maenida to drink and eat something, then get her up and about until the Weyrwoman's need for fellis got to be too much. Some days they _did_ get as far as the ledge, or down to the warmth of the Hatching Sands if Sh'vek was there to help get Maenida back up the stairs, but not many. Tarkan only checked on her twice a day now, and the Master from the Healer Hall hadn't been back in sevendays. But when Delene had told him that Maenida _wasn't_ getting better, all Master Rynder had done was insult her, and then Sh'vek had told her off for distressing Kiath unnecessarily! Why wouldn't they listen to her any more? Hadn't she been the one to tell them _exactly_ where the Weyrwoman had been hurting, the night of the accident? They might just have called her in to help soothe Kiath, but no-one else could have translated Kiath's memories like she had - or even found them at all, buried deep behind the queen's distress. If she hadn't been there to help, the Healers would never have known what to do, and Maenida would surely have died that very night. Master Rynder had said that all Maenida needed now was time, and that there was no reason she couldn't be completely back to normal within a turn, provided she took things easily and stayed clear of klah and willowsalic. Physically, she _was_ getting stronger... but there were gaps in her mind, and Delene wasn't sure that any amount of _time_ could ever mend those.

 _She_ is _improving, Delene,_ Kiath sent. _Not fast, but I can see more of her now, more of who she was, thanks to you._

 _Oh Kiath, I'm sorry I was thinking like that!_ Delene felt ashamed and guilty, and then cursed herself for letting the feelings show. Sure enough, Kiath buried her beneath the heavy weight of her gratitude all over again.

_You have nothing to be sorry for. I have my Maenida, thanks to you. Every dragon's rider changes, with time. Not so suddenly as this, but she's still Maenida to me._

_Is that true?_ Delene thought at Linnebith. _Am_ I _different?_

 _Of course you are,_ Linnebith replied. _But you're still my Leney._

It was a comforting thought. Delene held on to it as Maenida's face softened properly into dreamless sleep. She barely noticed when Kiath drew her mind away, and was half asleep herself when the queen spoke to her again.

_The Headwoman and Alaireth's rider do not get on. I do not understand why. A Headwoman should respect any weyrwoman, but a weyrwoman should respect the Headwoman, too._

_Rahnis thinks too much of herself._ The other weyrwoman might like numbers and records and anything clever, but she could shirk an unwelcome task just as well as anyone, Delene knew. Why, just a few sevendays back, she'd managed to spend three whole days curled up in her bed, while the rest of the Weyr – including Delene herself, at times – had worked every hour of the day and a good part of the night seeing the Tillek tithe delivered, sorted and shelved. And after all the fuss Rahnis had made over it, too! Besides, it wasn't as if Rahnis hadn't worked around her grief well enough in the days before and after the tithe... so it was _obviously_ just the lifting and carrying and sorting that she despised. Delene sniffed. As well she might! It was hardly a weyrwoman's work, that, but Delene did it when she had to. _It's not fair that Sh'vek let her get away with her shirking. I_ told _Ormaith she wasn't pulling her weight._

 _If it happens again, you must let me know, and I will speak to Ormaith,_ Kiath said _. But Alaireth's rider is well again now, so there is no longer a reason that she cannot do the work she is assigned._

_She was sick?_

_Yes._

_She didn't_ look _sick._

_She was in clutch. Now she is not, and that is why the Healer wouldn't allow her to help when the tithe came in. I agree with Ormaith; it was the right thing to do. This is a better choice for the Weyr._

Well, that was news. No wonder Rahnis had snapped so at Egritte earlier! But if she'd chosen to abort, why was she being so miserable about it? Delene would have given the matter more thought, but Kiath was still thinking at her, and she could tell from the queen's tone that she wanted her to pay attention. _Yes, Kiath?_

_Listen to Alaireth's rider when she speaks sense, but hold firm when you know you are right. She disagrees with you too often, even when the Headwoman supports you. That does not seem right. A Headwoman must respect the Weyrwoman, and manage the Weyr. I see that the Headwoman supports you, and she makes the people in the Weyr do their jobs. I see why you chose her; you can work with her and she can work with you, and that is exactly what Maenida taught you to do. Alaireth's rider may not approve of your choice, but Maenida would, and so do I._

_You do? Would she?_

_Of course! Would the old headwoman or her daughter or her assistant have suited you so well? I do not think they would!_ There was a pause, and Delene sensed Kiath rising from her couch. _Delene? I'm going out to the ledge now. I want to watch my Weyr for a while._

Sometimes Kiath asked for company on the ledge, but Delene didn't really fancy that on a day like today. The Fighting Wings had all gone south to drill, leaving the Weyr eerily quiet. It was a rare opportunity to enjoy some solitude and Delene wanted to make the most of it, not have her eyes draw her mind to the few dragons that were left. _I don't think there's much happening today, Kiath. The Wings are all out on drill, Alaireth's at the Smithcraft and the younger weyrlings are off to the east somewhere, stretching their wings. There's just the Watch Dragon and the older weyrlings left, and whoever's in the infirmary weyrs right_ now. Delene couldn't remember which dragons they were, just that they were two blues and a green. No-one special. _And I'm sure it's still snowing,_ she added.

 _Halbanath and Rrelth and Erenth are in the infirmary, but only Rrelth suffers, and I've been soothing him. The other grounded dragons are in their weyrs, and Trazfanath on watch reports that the snow is not so bad now. The weyrlings are at play in the snow. Their riders ought to be at work, but I do not think I shall tell Earith. These are_ my _weyrlings. And besides, they won't be weyrlings very much longer, and then there won't be anyone to watch while the Wings are drilling._

_Silly Kiath! The Weyr will never run out of weyrlings, not with three queens living in it._

_No, that is true._ Out on the ledge, Kiath folded her legs beneath her like a feline. _Go back to Linnebith now, Delene. Maenida and I will be fine on our own, for a while._

Snow or no snow, that wasn't an order Delene would refuse. Gathering up her coat and boots, she gratefully hurried back to the comforts of her own weyr.

 

 

 

Two days later, Delene placed her hands on her hips and stood her ground, just as Kiath had advised. “Rahnis, I _insist._ The Weyr _promised_ Lord Rethwind. Me and Wingleader C'nir and you and Wingleader M'gan _have_ to go. We might be able to swap M'gan for another of the Wingleaders, but they know C'nir is Sh'vek's second, and there _aren't_ any other queens in the Weyr!”

Rahnis was still at work crouched beside the agenothree tanks, and didn't even turn around to look at her. “Then we send an apology. M'gan can still go. He could take another Wingleader with him, couldn't he?”

Delene rolled her eyes at the woman's back. “Faranth, you can't replace a woman with a man at a Hold banquet! The seating arrangements would be ruined, and you just know _someone_ will get drunk enough to imply something nasty.”

Now Rahnis turned, her eyes twinkling in wicked delight. “We could always send S'kloss.”

“Rahnis!” Delene smothered her laugh with her fingers. S'kloss, at the wedding of a Lord Holder's daughter, representing the Weyr? It was a scandalous thought! “You're being silly now.” She frowned, watching Rahnis tapping the length of the up-turned tank with her fingers. She'd never seen anyone do that before. “What _are_ you doing with it?” she asked, curious.

“Something doesn't sound right with this one. Listen.”

Delene stepped closer, and waited. The pitch of Rahnis' fingernails on the metal changed about halfway down the tank. “It's only half full. Did it leak?”

“No, I emptied it.” She placed a hand against a patch of metal beneath one of the carry-handles. “I think it's around here. Shh.”

This time, Delene _did_ hear a difference. One of the weyrwoman's taps was quieter than the others “Did you do them all the same?”

“Muffled, isn't it? I've no idea why, but if the laminate inside is uneven, or damaged, there's no _way_ I'm taking this tank _between_ on Alaireth. I've emptied out twelve full tanks now. Three were like this, another sounded like it had grit inside it, and the fifth clunks when you tip it.”

Agenothree tanks _definitely_ shouldn't clunk! But that was only five, wasn't it? Delene frowned. “And the others?”

“Valves are sticky. Two of them should be all right after a good clean, but I don't think we can do anything about the massive dent in the third. The others, there's visible corrosion, even some signs of leakage from the feed-valve.” Rahnis carefully lowered the tank back onto the ground again. “Might be easier to send them all off to the Hall, but we need to find enough good ones for fall tomorrow. If one of us stays at the Weyr, we can probably make do with the six I've already got hold of, but otherwise-”

“Six will be enough,” Delene interrupted. Rahnis might not want to fly with that one, but she and Linnebith wouldn't fly with _any_ of them until a proper Craftmaster had taken a look! “Sort them out tomorrow. You can fight, and I'll stay back with Kiath, then the day after we can send to the Hall. I _told_ you we needed a new batch.”

“And they told me we still had a surplus on our hands,” Rahnis said as she straightened up again, “and refused outright to tithe us more until we'd accounted for what we'd already got. I could've bought another dozen at most on the Weyr's credit, but we need the marks.”

“So? If they want us to account for them... aren't they accounted for now?”

Rahnis frowned. “There's forty more rusting away back there that I've not even touched yet.”

“There you are then.” Delene smiled. _Help me push on her queen, Linnie. Make her see how hard her rider has been working, and now it's time to stop._ “Twelve tanks like you described, plus forty more, and the six good ones for tomorrow. All accounted for.”

“I suppose so...”

“Good. The rest of the job will have to wait until _after_ the wedding.” Delene picked up a hand-cloth from the table, and offered it over. “You don't have long to clean and change, and Lord Rethwind will be insulted if you don't look your best.”

Rahnis waved the cloth away, and rubbed at her back, adding another grimy smear to her shirt. “He'll have my apology, like I already said, Delene. Even if I leave the rest, I'm not done with these ones. The holding tank needs to be secured, the empty ones need to be flushed and set to dry, and the good tanks need re-filling.”

The last part was true, but clearing out the empties wasn't a quick job at all; Delene knew from watching it being done as a weyrling. She also knew that Rahnis didn't need to be the one to do it. “Oljan's team can do all that.” Was it Oljan, still? If not, it wouldn't take long to find his replacement. “You go and get changed, and I'll have someone send them down. It'll all be done by the time we're back; won't that be nice?” She folded the cleaning-cloth into the other weyrwoman's hand – careful to avoid getting grease on her own clothes – and made her tone even more wheedling. “Fort's sending Jassily and Trebbiath, Rahnis, and you _know_ what Jassily's like, _especially_ when Weyrwoman Sonaldra isn't around. We can't be outdone by Fort!”

 

 

 

It took the best part of the hour to find someone from the right work-crew who wasn't too busy to get to the job at _some_ point later that day, by which time Delene had grown hot and flustered enough to want to change again herself. Then, Kedd got her instructions backwards, and she had to tell him _again_ to make sure the good tanks were full, flush the holding tank and set the others to dry, which left even _less_ time to sort out her attire. In the end, she had to make do with the addition of just a soft woollen wrap, and her inlaid combs. The Hold ladies would have spent all morning relaxing, with help to look their best, and all she'd hear was complaints if the Weyr's delegation couldn't match them. The two Wingleaders passed muster very well – C'nir and M'gan both wore fine shirts and wool trousers beneath their wherhide. Rahnis was passable too, she supposed. The weyrwoman's dress was too warm for inside and too cold for outside, but it was fine enough for the occasion, if not a patch on Delene's own.

Delene clipped the belt of her riding-straps around her waist, then hauled up the heavy fur she always used during the winter months and tucked it over her legs. Sitting side-style, she didn't need the extra cover like she would have done astride, but it ought to keep her skirts from flapping too much. High Reaches Hold was always far too windy for comfort!

 _There, Linnie, I'm all set. Tell the others we can go now._ She set the image of the Hold in her mind in readiness. It was nestled at the northern end of a blind valley, close to the coast. The best grazing lands lay to the west, following the river as it curled around the hills on the way to the sea. In the other direction, the mountains of the High Reaches grew higher and fiercer, until you reached the Weyr itself. The valley itself was rather dull and useless, but they'd built the Hold there anyway, because the yellowish rock was soft and easy to carve. It was the same colour as the tan of the Hold's flag, everyone said, but Delene could count on her fingers the number of times she'd seen bare rock instead of snow. The colour the Holders had chosen for themselves was almost as silly as the name. High Reaches might be the name of the region, but the Hold itself really wasn't much above sea level. Low Reaches would be better. _Snow_ Reaches would be perfect. She pictured the Hold draped in its usual colours of white snow and the dark ashy smears that trailed down from the fireheights that no-one ever bothered to scrub clean, and told Linnebith to lead them _between_.

 _Here we are! Snow Reaches Hold!_ Linnebith announced as they emerged. _It's strange seeing it without all the smoke._

 _It is, isn't it?_ Giggling, Delene clamped a hand down over her thighs to keep the heavy fur in place; the wind was even stronger than she'd expected. Thankfully, the sun was shining, and the sky was bright and blue. Noon was always the best time to arrive at High Reaches Hold – the only time of day that the entire Gather Square was fully in the sunlight. Up on the Fire Heights and directly above the main door, the Hold's enormous blue-and-tan Gather Flag was flying, even though it wasn't a proper Gather. It looked like it could blow away at any moment. Half a dozen ragged streamers of smoke rose from other points along the Heights, only to be swiftly torn apart by the wind. No thread was due for days, but the Hold still needed to keep its ventilation fans turning, and its people fed. The Hold itself filled the five dragonlengths of cliff face between Gather square and the Fire Heights, but behind that wall it extended for almost a mile. It could get quite smelly, and Delene had never gone much beyond the windowed public rooms. There weren't many windows compared with the other Holds of that size, but they all had pale green shutters of beaten copper, except for the three replacements on the fifth level up which were still a shiny orange, but now showing streaks of green. Delene made note of it for her next visit. Only the lowest two tiers of shutters were open. Windows let in too much cold. If the weather was good and the skies were clear, people would get outside to work. If not, they stayed inside and relied on their glows. There were other pennants dangling from the closed windows on the upper tiers. Some of them were already torn, including the brown and yellow grid of Fort Hold. Lord Polladar wouldn't be pleased about that, but you couldn't really expect a southern banner to stand up to the northern winds.

 _Let's get down fast,_ she thought to Linnebith _. You should have the best spot, before any more dragons get_ _here_. There was already one queen on the ridge, but the other two dragons with her were a blue and a brown. _Who came with Trebbiath from Fort? That's her on the heights, isn't it?_

_Yes. Brown Gulsenth is the dragon twining necks with her, and the blue is Axath._

_Jassily let that brown fly her queen,_ again _?_

_They don't like bronzes._

_Well. There's no accounting for taste, is there?_ Delene looked back over her shoulder at the other High Reaches dragons following them down towards the ground. What brown could _possibly_ match a bronze like Baxuth or Telemath, and what sort of queen would even want one?

I _wouldn't mind sharing a Weyr with a queen like Trebbiath,_ Linnebith said. _She can keep all the browns, and I shall keep all the bronzes._

Delene sighed. It might have happened, too, G'dil had said. Maybe it still could? Delene had always got on well with Jassily. _Do you think we could get Fort to trade for Jassily and Trebbiath?_

 _There's no-one here to ask. And I'm not going to ask favours of a_ brown _!_

_I thought Weyrleader W'thas was coming. If I'd known he wasn't, we could've left Rahnis behind after all!_

_No, they have Threadfall to fight. Trebbiath and the other two were all they could spare to bring the Holders._

Delene made a moue. Trebbiath wouldn't have deigned to convey passengers, so there couldn't be many relatives of the groom travelling in from Fort at all – dragonback really was the only way to travel at this time of the turn, unless you didn't _mind_ losing a few fingers and toes on the way. The wedding promised to be a very small affair, with barely anyone of note present at all.

 _What about the Conclave? s_ he asked. Would they have approved the match already?

_What about the what, Leney?_

_Never mind,_ Delene thought back as Linnebith's feet touched the ground _._ She unbuckled herself from her flying straps, loosened them enough to make Linnebith more comfortable, then looked around for C'nir. Getting onto and off a queen dragon was hard enough in your own Weyr, when you _weren't_ wearing skirts. And where was Lord Rethwind? _Someone_ ought to be present to greet the High Reaches delegation! She tapped her fingers impatiently, unwilling to push the furs aside until C'nir arrived. Finally, he appeared and helped her down, just in time for the arrival of Lord Rethwind's younger son, Rethall.

“Good day to you, weyrwoman Delene! Father and the other guests are inside.”

Rethall greeted C'nir in turn, then offered her an arm, and she took it promptly. She'd already seen the other Hold son, Fallbren, over with Rahnis and M'gan and the large crate of southern fruits the Weyr had brought as a gift. The sooner they were all inside again the better. “My thanks, Rethall,” Delene said. “Are there many others coming today? Lord Maxeny, or Lord Grad and his new wife?” Tillek and Nabol were the closest Holds as the dragon flew, but even they were too far to ride on runnerback. If both Tillek and Nabol were coming, chances were that dignitaries from the other Holds would be coming, too.

“Tillek's here, and my uncle from Telgar. Oh, and Fort.”

The High Reaches blood had close links to those Holds, she knew. Delene waited for him to name some of the other guests, but Rethall said nothing. “What about the others?” she prompted.

Rethall shook his head as they passed through the Hold's outermost door, and nodded at the guardsmed on duty at the inner door. “The Conclave met and approved the match already – Father saw to _that_ – so there was no need to bring in half of Pern.”

Once inside and with their outer layers handed over to one of the Steward's people, they walked the short distance down the corridor that led into the Hold's main hall. The cavern diverged into a large open space bordered by two colonnades. There was a Harper sat playing pipes off to the left, where the windows were, but he wasn't one of the Hall's best. Rethall led her on, and called over a woman dressed in the Hold's colours carrying a tray of clouded wine glasses. Delene took one, hoping that the clouding was in the glass and not the drink itself.

“Father's over there,” Rethall said to C'nir. “I'll let him know you've arrived, and I'm sure he'll come to you shortly.”

Delene took a sip of the wine as he left, and stifled a sigh. The Tillek delegation had obviously brought the wine with them, and it really didn't bode at all well for the rest of the day.

 

 

 

Four or five glasses later, Delene was ready to change her opinion of many things. The wine was sharp on the tongue at first, but it went ever so well with the herby slices of meat and tubers they'd served for lunch. C'nir had been charming, pleasant company, careful to dance only with the _right_ Hold ladies, and a far sight more popular with the Holders overall than the rather insular Fort delegation. M'gan had paid the Holders a little less attention than he might have done, but otherwise he'd stuck to Rahnis' side, keeping them both out of trouble. Delene had only once had to steer Rahnis clear of taking the bridegroom to task for his antics on groundcrew duty earlier that autumn, but she didn't think the man had noticed the near insult. It helped that Ingon, who was usually a pleasant enough young man, was barely talking to anyone. Perhaps it was the presence of his father, Lord Polladar of Fort, dancing with all the _wrong_ Hold ladies, that had turned his mood so sulky? Or maybe it was Lady Inira of Fort, who obviously loved her only son almost as much as she loved eating and drinking. Quite an embarrassment, really. Watching Inira lumber across the room towards the new couple, Delene wondered how Bralanna, the bride, would fare back in Fort. Would Inira would treat her as a daughter or a rival, or simply squash her flat? Or would Bralanna drive them all mad with her laughter first?

Laughter aside, even obnoxious young Bralanna wasn't quite as hideous as Delene remembered. Only _slightly._ Unlike the rest of her family, who were quite pale in both skin and hair, Bralanna was a red-headed girl with an appalling number of freckles. She smiled and laughed a _lot_ , which did her no favours at all, and there was a gap between her front teeth almost wide enough to poke a child's finger through. Her dress, in its traditional layers of red, clashed terribly with her hair, and no amount of good tailoring or the embellishments of dark crimson lacework in the panel across her middle could make up for it. She seemed remarkably happy for a young woman forced into a winter marriage – and if no-one was unkind enough to ask _why_ the Lord of the High Reaches was wedding his daughter to a fosterling of Fort at this time of the turn – even another Lord's son – it was only because they already _knew_. This was the only marriage Bralanna would _ever_ have, and she was lucky to have got it at all. As canny as Lord Rethwind was, he'd had to spend his influence dear to see his daughter safely wed. At least, that's what Iynard of Telgar had said, and he was in as good a position as any to know.

Across the room, Bralanna brayed with laughter yet again, and Delene shared another wince with Iynard. It had proved perfect for the Weyr, meeting him here like this! She'd been talking to Lady Bretalla when he'd come past with Lord Rethwind, discussing the problem he was having with his excess herds. It had been the simplest thing in the world to join the conversation, and find out what he was asking for them. The Weyr was _always_ in need of more animals, and the price Telgar wanted was far short of what they'd planned to spend at Nabol! Before the hour was out, Delene had agreed a date for delivery of five hundred head of herdbeasts, at a price a Bitran would envy. And she'd done it all by herself, too! Everyone knew Telgar herdbeasts were some of the best; Weyrleader Sh'vek would be very proud of her work today. _And you'll eat well, too, Linnie! No more stringy wherries this winter, just fat, meaty cows!_

Smiling to herself, Delene looked around for C'nir, or Rahnis, or even M'gan. She wanted to break the good news to _someone_. She spotted the two men in the middle of a dance group, neither of them having had any success dancing with Jassily. The Fort weyrwoman was actually dancing with the blue rider from her Weyr, Thr'pay, and doing so very, very closely. Delene hoped that the Holders weren't paying close attention to Thr'pay's knots. There was no sign of Rahnis, but she wasn't going to comb the corridors or roust her out of a privy when she could be dancing. Delene waited for the tune to change, and was trying to catch C'nir's eye when Linnie called for her attention.

_Alaireth is leaving the heights. Her rider has left the Hold. They are returning to the Weyr._

_What?_ Delene turned on the spot in indecision. By the time she found her coat and went out after them, they'd be long gone. Should she race after them anyway? Find Lord Rethwind and make sure Rahnis had said a polite goodbye before vanishing? Pretend nothing had happened and hope she wasn't missed? Although... if she wasn't here, at least she wouldn't accidentally-on-purpose insult Ingon or one of the others again. And, if she didn't miss her guess, the Harper was playing the opening bars of her very favourite dance tune. _Oh, let them go. At least she won't be able to cause any trouble, and she can't claim_ any _credit for the deal I just made._ Delene looked up at Iynard and gave him a winning smile, and, thank Faranth, he took the hint.

“Weyrwoman? Would you do me the honour?”

“Why, of course!” She placed her hands in his, and let him lead her into the centre of the dance.

 

 

 

It was long past sunset and already near as cold as _between_ when Linnebith returned them to the Weyr. C'nir had had to leave High Reaches Hold an hour earlier to catch up on some Wing duties with Cloudburst, but M'gan had stayed to keep her company while she waited for the livestock contract to be signed, and to look over some Hold workers who might fit a few skill-shortages in the Lower Caverns. Delene planned to talk to Egritte about the two women later, but she wanted to speak to Sh'vek first of all.

_Tell the watch dragon we're back, Linnie, and ask Ormaith where the Weyrleader is. Tell him we have news._

They were halfway down to their weyr when Linnebith banked in the air, catching Delene quite by surprise. She almost dropped the package containing the new wrap that Lady Bretalla had gifted her with. _Where are we landing, Linnie?_

_Upwind._

_Upwind of what?_ Delene peered out over Linnebith's broad wings at their end of the weyrbowl. She couldn't see much, what with all the fog. Strange that it was just that one patch, too. There were people milling around outside a cavern at the far end of the foggy patch, and from the edge of the small crowd a long line that extended all the way back to the Lake. She'd have thought it was a fire-line, but she couldn't _smell_ fire, and that was fog, not smoke. _What happened, Linnie?_ She squinted at the cavern entrance. Was that the agenothree storage cave? Why, it was!

_Ormaith tells me there was an accident. He says we should be able to get back into our weyr later tonight, or we can borrow a weyr from a bronze on the other side of the bowl. He wants to speak to you. I am to land beside the Weyrling barracks, and he will see you there._

An accident? Faranth, Rahnis had been messing around with those tanks all morning! Delene shuddered, wondering how close she'd come to being injured herself. She might have been killed, _or_ horribly disfigured. She clipped the fur and her packages safely onto her flying straps, and slithered down to the ground in front of the barracks door. It was open, and overflowing with grown riders as well as the weyrlings who still lived inside. None of the older dragons were inside – only a few of the larger colours would fit, anyway.

 _The evacuated dragons are on the rim, or inside the hatching cavern, or sharing weyrs with their friends,_ Linnebith explained. _Ormaith says Sh'vek is on his way now._

Shivering, Delene looked around for the Weyrleader. She didn't know if he was inside the barracks or not; surely she could find him in there? She started forward, but hadn't even got past the crowd of green riders at the barracks entrance when she heard him calling to her from the bowl.

“Delene! A word with you, please.”

After a last, regretful look at the warmth of the barracks, Delene turned round again. Sh'vek was still half a dragonlength away, but she couldn't bear to wait. “It was the tanks, wasn't it? I told her she should wait, and get a proper Smithcrafter in. That fardling Rahnis, I _told_ her. She could've got herself killed. She could've got _me_ killed!”

“Someone was,” Sh'vek said coldly. “One of the Lower Caverns men. Kedd tells me they'd just started work. For some idiot reason, they started by flushing the holding tank. Only, it seems it wasn't properly emptied first, and they had an explosion on their hands within minutes. Too much gas pressure, apparently. When the holding tank went up, that did for Kedd's man and most of the other tanks stored nearby. The rest of them were lucky to escape with their lives.”

Delene blinked in confusion. “But... but that's what Rahnis _wanted_ them to do.”

“Strange, that's not what she told _me_. She said _you_ volunteered to pass on her instructions about what needed doing? ”

“I _did!_ I told them exactly what she said. Linnebith will tell you I did!” _You remember me telling them, don't you Linnie?_

 _That's right, Ormaith,_ Linnebith agreed. _Delene remembers doing it just like Rahnis wanted._

Sh'vek tilted his head to look up at Linnebith, and raised an eyebrow. “Thank you, Linnebith. That does clear things up. So you're saying Kedd's crew made the mistake?”

He didn't sound very happy about it, but Delene was glad he'd actually listened. Kiath was right; she _did_ need to stand firm and get Linnie to back her when she knew she was in the right. “Well,” she said, “I wasn't there, was I? I suppose it _might_ have been them, getting it wrong, but I think it might have been Rahnis giving me bad instructions that was the problem. Kedd _didn't_ like what Rahnis told me needed doing. And it wasn't her only mistake today.”

“Go on.”

“She's lucky Ingon of Fort didn't call insult! If he'd been paying any attention at all... or if his Lady mother had. I almost wish I hadn't got her out of that cavern at all, and she barely had time to make herself presentable, and that would have been just as bad, if we'd all been late to the Hold. She keeps telling me to pay attention to _my_ job, but I don't see that she's any better at all!” The words had raced out of her mouth one after another; she'd been half afraid that the Weyrleader would stop her before she'd had a chance to have her say. But he hadn't. Delene decided to add some more, and tell him her news from the Hold. “And that argument we had about the livestock the other day? That was a complete waste of time, too. I've made a better deal with Telgar.”

“ _You've_... made a better deal?”

Well! He didn't need to sound _quite_ as surprised as all that! “All by myself.” Delene allowed herself a smug smile. “Five hundred of Telgar's best herdbeasts, at half the price of what we'd be paying to Nabol. We can collect a few days before Turnover. I've the contract all signed and everything!”

Sh'vek barked a laugh and shook his head. “How drunk did they all _get?_ Delene, this makes up for a lot. I'm impressed.” He reached across, and clasped her hands in his in congratulation “You've done yourself proud, today. Telgar Weyr will be spitting mad when they hear of this... perhaps we can turn a profit, and sell the Nabol herds _their_ way?”

She grinned up at him. “Does this mean...”

“Yes, yes. You can get those extras you wanted on the next tithe. I think you've more than earned them.” He flicked his head towards the barracks door. “Get inside before you freeze to death. I'll make sure you and Linnebith are first back in your weyr, tonight.”

Delene ran his words over and over in her head as she gathered her things from Linnebith's straps. The Weyrleader was proud of her! Had the riders at the barracks entrance overheard? She hoped they had; oh, she was looking forward to word of this spreading!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now you've met Delene... *grin* Whoever said a HAD had to be smart?
> 
> (That poor bloke from Kedd's workcrew was almost certainly called something like Jilleen, by the way. A placid +1 points if you get the reference. And yes, Sh'vek knows exactly where the blame for the accident lies, but punishing Delene over it isn't going to bring anyone back to life.)


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this one early to keep pace with story-time, and also because Christmas (and YULETIDE!) will swallow my fic time for the next fortnight. The next chapter will appear on or shortly before New Year's Eve. And I guess substance abuse belongs in the tagset now...  
> Oh, and if anyone's interested in a behind-the-scenes view of F'ren getting the first look at his winglist at the back end of chapter 6, it's available at the Anne McCaffrey Fans Forum at http://www.annemccaffreyfans.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1159226#post1159226 but visible to forum members only. Give me a shout if you're interested enough for me to mirror it here.

_At an autumn Gather, 'fore the Pass_   
_Gathered vintners from the finest Halls_   
_To convince the Lord that theirs alone_   
_Was a vintage better than the rest._

_Boasts and wagers each laid down_   
_That their wares would grace the wedding feast_   
_And the warring Crafters' noise did grow_   
_'til the Harpers' song was quite oppressed._

_“Bring me a taste of every skin,”_   
_said the singer to the feuding men._   
_“For a Harper's judgement's as fair as his song.”_   
_And their wares were put to the Harper's test._

_When all was done the Harper raised his glass_   
_And declared the contest far too close_   
_Though a sip or a skin might yet still prove_   
_One vintage better than the rest_

_Five skins full the man did down_   
_'Fore the sun came dawning in the east_   
_And the vintners sorely rued the night:_   
_Of disputed wines, not a drop was left._

 

**Late evening, 10.13.34**

**High Reaches Weyr,**

 

It was the same dream again.

Rahnis watched M'ton racing across the sand towards her, stumbling every other stride. Her own legs were rooted to the spot: as heavy and solid as her heart, and the aching of her empty body. His features were vague and his form intangible, and she could see the breakers through him, and through Narnoth. The dragon was walking away from her, into the sea. Out, out, out into the waves, while M'ton, racing forwards, somehow drew further and further away. It would end when he reached her, she knew, with that touch she'd feel on her face when she could no longer see him anymore, and then Alaireth would start to keen. She scrubbed at her eyes, willing his face into better focus, forcing her memory to show him to her as he was. As he _was_. All she had left of him were fraying memories. The pain of his absence hurt so much, but she didn't want it to stop, because she was so afraid of what that would mean. Letting go, losing him. Had she loved him so little?

One step forward, then another. She forced herself to move, felt the sand spilling around her feet and knees and thighs. At least it _was_ sand this time, not dark waters rising about her, hot and reddened by the setting sun. The memory almost forced the dream to change. No. That wasn't the way. It was the beach she had to change, pulling and twisting and ripping at it, seizing M'ton, holding him, feeling the warmth of his body and his breath, and oh, he was there, there, she had him, she-

Alaireth keened.

Rahnis woke with a start, and realised that Alaireth really _was_ keening, here and now, not just within her dream. _Who who who?_ she asked, fear and heartache surging palpably within her body.

_Blue Yath, and C'tis. Snowfall Wing. Yath followed his rider._

_But he's turns younger than me! Can't be more than twenty-five at most._ She rolled up and out of her bed, and scrabbled for yesterday's trousers on the floor. _I'm going to find out what happened. Ask the watchdragon the hour for me, and find out where Yath was weyred._ Pullover and boots followed, but she decided not to bother with coat or flying straps, not for a short flight.

Alaireth was waiting for her rider out on her ledge, yellow-whirling eyes gazing across the bowl. _Yath's weyr is on the south face_ , she said. _Modulanth has the watch. He tells me it's not quite midnight yet. I spoke to Kiath and Ormaith, too. I am to watch for the healer, and take him up with us._

“That's good. Do you see them yet?”

_There, in the bowl. He has a little one, a brown. I think he understands to tell the healer to wait for us there._

Alaireth extended a leg and tilted her neck sideways, allowing Rahnis to grab hold of a neck ridge to help her mount. She settled into place between Alaireth's ridges, and slapped the dragon lightly on the neck. _I'm set._

The queen launched herself from her ledge, gaining a dragonlength or so in height as she crossed the bowl before gliding down towards where Tarkan was standing just outside the infirmary. Even in the dim light cast by Timor's weak shining and the single glow-lamp the healer carried, Tarkan's relief at seeing them was clear.

“Weyrwoman, my thanks. Wasn't sure who to get Pickle to ask for a lift. Or even what's happened.”

“What do you know?” she asked, bending over and stretching out a hand to help him up.

“Only what my wakeful dragonrider patients could tell me. C'tis and Yath, but the rider went first. Shouldn't have happened, young as they both are.”

“My thoughts, too.”

Tarkan awkwardly swung his leg over Alaireth's neck behind her, and fumbled for a hold on the straps that weren't there. “Ah. White knuckles for me then?”

“'Fraid so. Launch is worst. Hold as tight as you need, and we'll be off at three on your count, okay?”

Alaireth made the flight as smooth as she could, deftly countering the downdraughts near the higher-level western weyrs. Yath's narrow ledge wasn't empty, and there plainly wasn't room for more than the one large dragon already there. Silently, the bronze spread his wings and dropped down to an empty ledge a dragonlength below, giving Alaireth the space she needed to land.

“Who was that?” Tarkan asked.

“F'ren's Trath,” Rahnis said, thanking Alaireth silently as the queen relayed the information. “He's... was... their Wingleader.”

Tarkan needed no assistance dismounting, and had disappeared into the shadowed weyr before Rahnis' own feet had touched the ground. Apprehensively, she followed, glad to find that even the dragonweyr was glow-lit. F'ren met her there, barefoot and wearing even fewer layers than she was. He stared blankly at her for a moment, then gave his head a slight shake.

“Healer's a bit pointless now, don't you think? And your jumper is on backwards.”

Considering the state of his own shirt buttons, that was hardly a fair remark. “Don't you care about _how_ a young rider like C'tis could just die like that?”

“Care?” he snapped. “About _how he died_? He drank himself into a fardling stupor and choked on his own vomit, that's how.”

“Oh.” The sheer pointless waste of two lives left her lost for words.

F'ren's face twisted in distress, and he turned away from her, slamming his arm violently against the wall of the far-too-empty dragonweyr. He held it there, then brought his face close to rest against it. His voice, when he spoke again, was unnaturally even. “Shard it. Shard it, this wall's still fardling _warm_. I _knew_ he drank too much. Whole Wing knew it, especially when he needed to blot everything out, all the Thread and the fear and the _memories_. Shells, can't say I blame him for that. Know what it's like, you know? But I should've done something. Should've done something _more._ ”

Rahnis stepped closer and placed a hand on his other arm. “What could you do? No-one's going to stop a rider taking a wineskin or two...”

“Or six,” he interjected dryly.

“...a skin or two up to their own weyr,” Rahnis finished. “I doubt even his dragon could've stopped him doing that.”

“The wine didn't kill him, though. I did.” He pulled his arm free of her hand, and let it drop to his side. “I did,” he repeated softly. “Forty-se... forty-six riders and their dragons, and we're no better than Threadbait, as far as most people here are concerned. Doesn't matter what I do, what I say, it's still _me_ forcing them up there into the worst of it. Thought I could turn them around, like Cloudburst. Show them how to stand tall and proud, how to meet it all face on. Sh'vek _and_ the Threads. Perhaps I _should_ learn how to set my fardling dreams aside!” He lifted his face away from the wall to look her piercingly in the eyes. “Tell me I'm wrong, Rahnis.”

He wasn't wrong, that was the problem. Snowfall was in an _awful_ state – not that the rest of the Weyr was all that much better. Dragon memories faded fast, but you didn't need to _remember_ the relentlessness of Threadfall in all the gory details to know what it meant. Death. Maybe it wouldn't find you today, but sooner or later it would, and more likely sooner rather than later. Especially for Snowfall Wing. A queen dragon could firm up that faltering resolve, could stop that growing sickness in its tracks. A Weyr's dragons relied on their queens that way. On Kiath, poor Kiath, who knew what the Weyr was missing and how much of a burden she and Maenida were to everyone around them, pulling at them desperately, offering up her own fatigue and fear in place of the strength and endurance that they rightfully deserved from her. On Linnebith, aloof and inexperienced, and too protective of Delene to place any extra burden on her rider's shoulders. And on Alaireth. She, too, knew full well what was needed from her, but was also rightfully protective of her rider's heart and mind first and foremost. The realisation stung Rahnis to shame. She'd thought that she'd been coping as well as any other rider who'd lost a weyrmate, as any other woman who'd grieved for a life stolen by the cold darkness of _between –_ and Faranth knew, the High Reaches had more than its fair share of both. There was nothing she could do that would bring M'ton back to her, nor the smallest part of their hoped-for future. As soon as Tarkan had permitted her to leave her weyr, she'd thrown herself into as much work as she could physically cope with, as if records and tithe-stocks and a less-than-pristine ledge mattered anywhere near as much as _people_. Somewhere along the way, she'd lost sight of the real priorities. If F'ren was somehow responsible for his rider's death, he surely wasn't alone in that. She'd _seen_ how bad things were getting in Snowfall, known that Linnebith wouldn't risk exposing Delene to the worst of it, not yet. No, she hadn't done nearly enough. “I'm sorry,” she blurted out.

F'ren gave a low laugh, then looked away. “You agree with me, then.”

That he was to blame? That hadn't been what she'd meant at all, but it hardly mattered. _Oh, Alaireth, we could have helped them. I'm sorry I've been so weak, sorry that..._

Alaireth was quick to answer her distress. _Are you sorry you loved? Sorry you live?_

_No!_

_Well then. You loved. You live. What is to regret in that? Where is the weakness? I see nothing shameful in your grief. Do we dragons not keen, in honour and love and respect?_ Alaireth's mind held hers in tender adoration. _If there is more this Weyr must have of us, we shall give it together._

_All I have left is you._

Rahnis took a deep breath to steady herself, and turned her attention back to the bronzerider. “F'ren? What I meant.... You shouldn't blame yourself. The sickness in Snowfall's spirits, it runs Weyr-wide. Whatever Alaireth and I can do to help your Wing, it's yours for the asking.”

“Too late to help C'tis.” He shook his head and cursed the dead man quietly. “Trath was right. I should have spoken to you sooner, like St'larna said. Linnebith was fardling useless. Didn't think I'd be doing you any favours, that was all, not so soon after... well.”

His gaze dropped to her belly. Rahnis squeezed her eyes tightly shut and turned away, leaning mentally on Alaireth for support. “Tarkan told you I'd miscarried?” He could damn well fly himself back down again if he had!

“No. Very definitely not. He figured I needed to hear _him_ talk about the cost of threadfighting.” F'ren laughed bitterly. “Not like I think of anything _but_ that these days. One of his hypotheticals, well... it seemed to fit, and he couldn't exactly deny it after I'd pressed him on it. I don't expect you want to talk about it. Can't say I like talking about my hand, either, though he – says I should. But what's the fardling point? It's not like I _need_ more than half my left hand to survive, or you need.... Not like _Yath_ needed _C'tis_ , not like Pern needs fighting dragons.”

The despair in his voice resonated horribly in her own heart. “F'ren...”

“So what if it steals our limbs and our lives, eh?” He shouted his words at the empty weyr.

“Shut UP, F'ren!” It was all she could do not to break down on the spot. Losing lives to threadfighting, the price of being a dragonrider during a Pass: oh, she'd long been prepared to bear that. But the more he talked, the more he was reminding her that it hadn't been Thread that had taken M'ton, nor had it been Thread alone that had driven F'ren's wingman to self-destruction. She turned away and walked back towards the ledge. Thread was something she could fight back against. How could she fight back against Vallenka's insidious behaviour? What was left to fight for? Even her memory of M'ton was in tatters.

F'ren mumbled an apology of sorts at her back, then called her name and started after her. “It's freezing out there.”

Exposing herself to the painful cold of winter, controlling her own suffering... it was tempting.

 _But foolish,_ Alaireth added. _Stay inside, until the healer is done._

She sighed, and stopped in her tracks. “Alaireth agrees with you.”

He came up beside her, and pointed out a low bench-shape carved out of the wall following a hard stratum of rock. “Won't be as warm as Yath's couch, but I'd be a lot more comfortable sitting there while we wait for Tarkan.” A set of pegs were bolted to the wall above the bench. Yath's flying straps hung from them in untidy loops, along with a flaccid wineskin and a pair of rusting knives. F'ren gathered the leather up and chucked it towards the dragon's couch, then kicked aside the litter of empty oil pots, rags and a half-made snake trap that lay on the floor. “Appearances deceive. C'tis always _looked_ tidy enough, and he kept Yath happy and fit.”

Rahnis shifted another stray bit of worn harness and sat down beside him. “I'd never have guessed he was suffering to look at him.”

F'ren continued. “It's like he was trying to make up for the mess he'd made of himself. Can't say he lacked courage during threadfall, even if he _did_ find it in the wine. Courage is easy, when your dragon's got a belly full of flame, and you've all your friends around you. Doesn't help much beyond that, and I think he knew it. Saw too many bad scores, lost too many friends, had too many close calls. He kept it from Yath as well as he could, hid it all in drink and jokes. Running away. He used to be good at that, running. Sprints, mind, not endurance. No weyrmate, but there's a few greenriders will miss his company. And Yath. Poor Yath. I wonder how much he knew?”

If he _had_ known... would he have called on Trath or one of the queens, or borne it in stoic pride, or denial? And what could any of them have done? “We'll never know,” Rahnis breathed back.

“No. Doesn't seem right though, does it? They die, because we didn't do enough for them. They die, and the Weyr'll forget them long before _this_ weyr's ever used again.” He studied her intently for a few moments. “I was wondering... would it help, if you weren't the only one to remember M'ton how _you_ want him remembered?”

Of all the things he might have said, she'd never have expected that. “I don't know.” She looked away and rubbed at the corner of her eyes with the heel of her hand. _What do you think, Alaireth?_

_Yes. Talk to him. Tell him of Narnoth's rider._

Narnoth's rider. Not M'ton. _Narnoth's rider_. Rahnis choked back the first sob and shook her head, pushing the thought down, hard, before Alaireth could pick up on it. There was no stopping the tears that followed.

“Shhh.” F'ren pulled her close, and stroked her hair while she wept. For M'ton and Narnoth, pitiful C'tis and his Yath, poor Kiath, and all the other suffering fools out there. But mostly, for M'ton.

“It's okay,” he said, as she slowly brought her grief under control. “Probably not a good time, anyway.”

Rahnis pulled her face away from the slightly damp fabric of his shirt. “I don't think we've ever talked at a _good_ time.”

F'ren looked like he had been about to disagree, and had then thought better of the idea. “He seemed like a decent man, from the little I saw of him.”

She wasn't sure what he was basing his opinion on. You couldn't take the measure of a man from a few awkward meetings, or the odd chance encounter or overheard conversation at a gather. She herself had spoken of F'ren to M'ton, but she'd be very surprised if anyone had done the reverse, and discussed M'ton with F'ren. Ignorant flattery was almost as distasteful to her ears as the slanders she'd been forced to listen to since his death. “I'm not sure how I should take that, coming from you. You've no idea what he was like.”

He shook his head. “No, just guesswork. I could tell how much he cared for you though. He was very forthright there, very honest. Honest enough to tell me exactly what he thought of me.”

“He did?”

“Oh, yes. In excruciating detail. I remember that he even got most of it right. Perceptive man, your M'ton was.”

She wondered when _that_ had happened. It must have been some time after Alaireth's flight. He'd been in Ista again for the hatching; had it been then? M'ton had been much more himself again by the time the eggs had hatched, and they'd mended things between them several sevendays earlier. He'd been nothing but friendly and polite to F'ren – at least when she'd been there too - but F'ren _had_ left very abruptly, she remembered. She knew what M'ton had thought of him and the picture wasn't particularly flattering. “He had some blind spots. He never saw Vallenka for what she was.”

“Ah, but Vallenka never slept with you.”

It was a valid answer, she supposed, but she wished he hadn't brought it up. Her distaste must have shown on her face; F'ren gave her a small grin.

“Or so I assume?” he added.

“Share Vallenka's bed? What an abominable thought!”

“Sorry. St'larna's been educating me, recently, but I think even she'd draw the line there.”

Even in jest, it was all getting a little too close to the cause of her separation from M'ton. Rahnis was glad when he quickly changed the subject.

“Was it M'ton who Searched you? A lot of weyrmates start out that way. G'dil and Delene did.”

“Why doesn't that surprise me?” She smiled wryly. “No, it was K'mallo and Tath who brought me to the Weyr. M'ton wasn't even a wingsecond back then, and he certainly knew better than to mess around with a weyrling. We talked, though, and he had a real knack for getting me to laugh. A lot. And then Alaireth pointed out to both of us that _she_ might still have some growing up to do, but neither of _us_ did. Vallenka was very approving of it all, at first. The records are _full_ of disastrous stories of holdbred goldriders who cling on to their morals and their inexperience, and she certainly made sure all of us juniors had read them.”

“So _that_ 's why you devoted yourself to the records?”

“Mmm. So _exciting_ , those endless shelves of accounts, the thrill of the genealogy lists, the suspense of weyr-allocation...” She let the sarcasm fade. “No, mostly it was a good way of keeping out of Vallenka's sight. And I had my own interests to research. By the time she realised M'ton was more than a passing infatuation to me, well, you know how that turned out. I'll never forgive Vallenka for what she did. He never wanted to be a Weyrleader, never needed it like some riders seem to.” She gave F'ren an apologetic look, not sure how he'd take that remark - though it wasn't as if he'd ever made any secret of that particular ambition. “But he could have done it if she'd given him a chance. When I think of the number of times he _defended_ her to me. Ah!”

“He was under a lot of pressure from her, wasn't he?”

Rahnis looked away. “I'd rather not talk about that.” Even if Sh'vek hadn't expressly forbidden her to mention the details, she really didn't want to dwell on it. There was enough talk in the Weyr already about how quickly M'ton had cracked, how poorly suited he'd been for the job. The funny thing was, none of it would have bothered M'ton at all, not when they both knew better.

“I understand. From what I've heard, he _was_ a good Wingleader.”

Naturally, the man's main interest would be Threadfighting. “Oh yes. His Wing liked him, trusted him, and he more than earned that from them. He never asked more from a dragon or rider than they could give, and disputes just seemed to trickle away when he was around. Huh. Except with me. He didn't like needless worry, either. Real fears, like Thread? You had to respect it, fight it... and then laugh in its face afterwards by living life to the full.” The memories would swamp her if she let them, but why shouldn't she?

 _M'ton was a very good man, Rahnis. I loved him too_.

Letting Alaireth share her recollection of the happiest moments she and M'ton had had together, Rahnis smiled through her tears. “Eight turns we had together. Eight wonderful turns.” But F'ren wasn't interested in those memories, nor was she inclined to share them with him. Instead, she turned the subject back to M'ton's skills as a Wingleader. “If his wing excelled in anything, I'd say it was morale.”

“I could do with a few lessons in that. Though I think Snowfall might have been a challenge even for him.”

There was nothing to be gained from dwelling on the lives they might have lived had things been different, but some outcomes were easier than others to predict with accuracy. “Probably. The Wingseconds, especially.”

This time, F'ren did wince. “Yeah. Yeah I'm sure he'd have had a terrible time with D'barn. Me, on the other hand...” A shadow passed across the opening to the inner weyr, and F'ren paused to watch. When he spoke again, the ease which had steadily grown in his voice while they'd talked had all but vanished. “Tarkan must be done. C'tis could've done with a Wingleader like M'ton, I think. He and Yath might still be here, if he had.”

Rahnis didn't have an answer to that. She stood up, and walked over to meet Tarkan. “I'm sorry, I should have offered to help.”

Tarkan shook his head. “None needed.” He turned his attention to F'ren. “Wingleader. There's nothing that disagrees with the obvious diagnosis. The state he was in, I'd say he was most of the way to killing himself with the drink already. Wish you'd sent him to me sooner.”

F'ren grunted. “Stick it in the report, along with all the rest.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. What would be the point? Instead, you can tell me how well you've managed to curb V'mok's fellis habit, and then you can ask me, _politely_ , mind you, whether I have any suggestions of how to treat E'dar's headaches.”

“You sound like you're trying to help me.”

“My job, bronzerider, is to help _all_ of you. Not that anyone listens to a mere healer.” He sighed, and slung his bag over one shoulder. “I'll get someone sent up here to see to what needs doing in the morning.”

“No,” F'ren said. “I'll do it now. He shouldn't be so long away from Yath. Snowfall will reunite them at dawn. I owe him that, at the very least.”

“Guilt?” Tarkan asked as F'ren reached the doorway.

The bronzerider stopped, but didn't turn around. “Responsibility.”

“And you think you're up to it, do you?” The healer flexed his raised left hand in reminder, not that F'ren could see him do it. “Dead people are more awkward than you'd think.”

“I said I'd do it. And I will.”

Tarkan shared a long-suffering look with Rahnis as she led him back out to the ledge and Alaireth, but she could see that he'd taken F'ren at his word. The bronzerider might feel he had failed his wingrider in life, but he wouldn't fail him past his death.

 

 

 

As sorely as she'd needed to make up for her interrupted sleep, after dropping Tarkan back at the infirmary Rahnis had decided to return to Yath's weyr instead her own. Tarkan had been right about F'ren needing the help. It wasn't pleasant, but she, too, had felt she owed it to the man. There was a strange catharsis to be found within those final tasks. It wasn't M'ton's cold body she was re-dressing in worn but clean clothing, but it gave her a sense of finality that she'd been missing since his death. Dragons and riders skipped _between_ so frequently: how was it _not_ possible that he might simply re-emerge in the sky one day? But dead was dead, and the dragons had keened for him and Narnoth both, just as they had for Yath and C'tis. She'd talked to F'ren some more, of M'ton the man, not just M'ton the Wingleader, and he'd shared more of his worries over his Wing with her in return.

Back in her own weyr, Rahnis had spent the remainder of the night turning the problem over and over in her head in between fitful bouts of sleep. She'd been spared more dreams of M'ton, but her sleeping mind had come up with plenty of other ways to explore her need for escape and her sense of grief and abandonment. Pondering the issues in Snowfall Wing at least offered some respite. There was no denying the fact that they desperately needed a queen's strengthening influence – nor that they needed some form of respite in which to heal. She and Alaireth could do so much to help, but what use was it to spend themselves hopelessly? The more she thought about it, the more her concerns grew. Was the largest problem in the Wing itself, or in the antagonism between Wing- and Weyrleader? If the former, had Sh'vek intended _M'ton_ to suffer and fail like F'ren? She couldn't decide if that was better or worse than the alternative: that Sh'vek, like his sister, would play twisted games with innocent lives, heedless of the wider consequences. Either way, the Weyrleader was the only person who could give her the answers she needed. How, though? She didn't think she could get away with simply _asking_ him. Finally, shortly before dawn, she decided on the simplest means of finding out.

She found the Weyrleader sitting at Maenida's bedside with a mug of klah, reading over a stack of reports. Maenida herself was fast asleep, snoring softly. She was getting thinner, Rahnis realised. The hard-earned musculature of a queenrider had almost completely vanished from the arms that lay slack on top of the bed-covers, and if her hair had grown back now, it was the only part of her that looked truly healthy.

Sh'vek looked up from his slate, and placed his mug down to one side. “Ormaith said you wanted to talk. Are we working you too hard?”

His eyes travelled the length of her body, and she self-consciously realised how dishevelled she must appear. By contrast, Sh'vek was the very image of a Weyrleader in his prime, from polished boots to the perfect hang of his shoulder knots. She'd left her own rank cords behind in her weyr. Her hair, overdue for a cut, was likely sticking out in places, and the icy water she'd splashed on her face had done little to dispel the ever-present marks of her exhaustion. She'd hoped to be over that by now, but work and grief and lack of sleep hadn't given her body anywhere near as much rest as she needed. At least her clothes were clean and right-way-on, but she hadn't yet had a chance to hem up the over-long winter trousers she'd acquired from the Weyr's stores, and they were already fraying badly around her ankles. Her other pair had been ruined cleaning up after the agenothree-spillage, and she still wasn't sure if he blamed _her_ for that or not. Anything that hadn't been destroyed outright in the initial explosion had sat in a growing pool of acid for the best part of three hours, merrily corroding and sending up noxious fumes, until they'd finally got enough water in to get the situation under control. And none of it would _ever_ have happened at all, if she'd had the sense to stay put and finish the fardling job herself. No, it was pointless to dwell on it now. Rahnis shook her head; he'd asked her a question, she remembered. “I didn't sleep too well.”

“Mmm. So I see. It was good of you to take the Healer up to deal with C'tis last night. He's with his dragon now, I take it.”

Body cleaned and interred _between_ , abandoned to the darkness and whatever reunion with his dragon a corpse could manage. A sad end, but more fitting for a rider than any of the alternatives. “No-one should die like that, especially not a rider.”

Sh'vek grunted, and briefly glanced back down at his report before adding it to the stack resting on the edge of the bed. He stretched out his hand to pick up his mug again. “It's always been a weyrman's right to suicide.”

“Not while their dragons live!”

“If you have a problem with C'tis' behaviour, you need to take it up with his Wingleader first.”

That was as good an opening as she was likely to get. “I have a better idea. I think you should remove F'ren from Snowfall.”

Her words caught him mid-gulp, and he nearly choked on his klah, spilling most of what was left in the mug down his shirt. Heedless of the growing stain, he stared at her in frank disbelief.

“ _What_ did you just say?”

“Snowfall needs a different Wingleader. Switch F'ren for someone else, demote him, whatever – just get him out of that Wing, before someone else dies.”

Really, it was the easiest solution of all. F'ren might not be too happy with her if he ended up as just another Wingrider again – not that she'd asked him for his friendship in the first place – but the help she'd promised him had been for the good of his _Wing_ , not to further his own ambitions. If he couldn't see the sense of what she was doing, he didn't deserve a Wingleader's knots anyway. With a different Wingleader in place, would Sh'vek really push Snowfall so hard? Would they perform better under the leadership of, say, C'nir? It would still take time and effort on Alaireth's part to help bring the Wing back to prime fighting condition, or at least as close to it as they could manage. If that still wasn't good enough...well, in that case, she'd know for sure that leadership of Snowfall, the Wing that Sh'vek had intended for M'ton, was deadlier than Thread itself.

Sh'vek rose from his chair, and walked towards her. “Why? Why do _you_ want me to do such a thing?”

She took a deep breath, and launched into what she hoped would be an acceptable explanation. “The Wing is an _utter_ mess. I know F'ren wasn't your first choice as Snowfall's Wingleader, but too many of his riders actively dislike him.”

“Obviously not. I meant that Wing for M'ton. With F'ren as a foil, he'd have had a level of respect and loyalty from his wingmen that F'ren can't command. The other riders might look like a mixed bag, but all of them would have benefited from the fresh start. As for F'ren himself, chances are, he'd have _that_ problem in any Wing I give him.” The corners of the Weyrleader's lips quirked into a slight smile.

She hadn't expected him to be as honest as that about the quality of Snowfall's riders. But even as tired as she was, Rahnis couldn't miss the deeper meaning in Sh'vek's words. Well-liked or not, F'ren would never get a good Wing from Sh'vek. The deliberate malice in it reminded her far too strongly of Vallenka, and she thoughtlessly voiced the first words that came into her mouth. “You _really_ don't like him, do you?”

Sh'vek raised an eyebrow. “No. But personality clashes needn't get in the way of Threadfighting. Nor should they be any excuse for insubordination.”

Not from F'ren's wingriders, not from F'ren himself, and certainly not from her. “I understand, Weyrleader,” Rahnis said. “But it's not just that. There are other problems in the Wing that-”

“All of them manageable by a competent Wingleader, which even I have to recognise that he is.”

“Yes... but not the way things are right now.” Cautiously, Rahnis forced herself to continue. She'd likely have another sevenday's worth of latrines to clean if he thought she was being overly critical of his decisions, but she couldn't think of any other way to make her point. “Snowfall is flying to the very limits of its stamina. The dragons are exhausted, and the riders are even worse. P'lok's nerve is still broken, and there are half a dozen riders almost as bad. Ajacka...well, I'm hardly the best person to criticise her, but I think she still blames F'ren for H'ersh's death. Faranth knows why, but there it is. I don't think she'll go the way of T'shell, but judging by Rebreggath's state of mind, Sl'array might. As for the other riders....”

He stared down at her coldly. “What would you suggest I do, Rahnis? Send them off for rest and relaxation while the rest of us fight Thread? Is _that_ how you think a Weyrleader should behave?”

How dare he throw M'ton's death at her like that! The fact that she'd cried herself out during the night was enough to stop her from breaking down there and then, but she had no such shield for the fury that his words evoked. “While the rest of you are fighting Thread, Snowfall is _dying_ in it. They've borne the brunt of the fighting since I've been here, and they can't carry on like that. Alaireth can try to shore them up, but there's a limit to what she can do. The conditions they've been fighting in, the state they're in – it's a wonder we've not had to make more rescues than we have. Alaireth's all I have left, and I will _not_ allow her to be risked unnecessarily.” She looked pointedly over at Maenida's still form on the bed, then back at Sh'vek. “I don't think you can afford to lose any _more_ weyrwomen. So whatever reasoning you're using, _Weyrleader_ , either you take Snowfall out of the worst parts of threadfall, or you take F'ren out of the Wing. Because I just can't see _how_ it serves the Weyr's interests – or Pern's – any other way.”

“Have you quite _finished_ , Rahnis?”

She nodded mutely, and looked down and away. No question of it, he was furious with her now! _Shells, Alaireth, why didn't you stop me_ saying _those things?_

_Because they needed to be said. I've told Ormaith as much, myself._

“Look at me, Rahnis.”

Warily, she did so. He seemed to have his temper fully under control – or so she hoped – but the scrutiny she found herself under in the long silence that followed was even more discomfiting than his anger was. She might have beenright about Snowfall, but Rahnis still didn't know what Sh'vek would do with what he'd told her – besides setting her another set of punishment chores for her impertinence, no doubt.

“Vallenka warned me you could be difficult, but-” Sh'vek broke off and looked away towards the bowl, a frown creasing his forehead. “Ormaith?”

When he looked back at her again, something had changed. The look in the Weyrleader's grey-blue eyes was no less intense, but now he seemed more thoughtful than angry. Rahnis wondered what his dragon had told him, relieved that Ormaith had apparently been more willing to listen to Alaireth than Sh'vek had been to her.

“Well...Weyrwoman?” he prompted at length.

Rightly or wrongly, he was still clearly expecting some kind of apology from her. “I'm sorry,” Rahnis said. “It's not my place to remind a Weyrleader of his duty.”

It was only after the words were out that she realised how they sounded.

“Fardling woman, as if that's not a reminder in itself!” Sh'vek snapped. Then, to her great surprise, he started to chuckle. “Ormaith tells me I should cut you some slack. You're exhausted. If Snowfall's in a bad way, I'd wager my last half-mark that you're just as bad.”

He reached out and gently tucked a stray lock of her hair back behind her ear, before cupping her chin with his hand. It was overly familiar of him, but she was too unsettled by his mercurial mood to protest.

“You _are_ exhausted,” the Weyrleader repeated. “Misplaced or not, I do value your honesty, Rahnis. Will you respect mine in turn? Working yourself to the bone won't serve the Weyr in the long run. Go back to your weyr, get some sleep, and leave the fighting Wings for me to worry about.”

Honest or not, the Weyrleader's words had little power to assuage her fears. She _still_ didn't know what Sh'vek meant to do about F'ren's Wing! “What will-”

He moved a finger to her lips in warning, and she immediately fell silent.

“Snowfall?” Sh'vek smiled. “We'll see. You've given me a great deal to think about, Rahnis, a very great deal.”

 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going back to a vague plan of updating on weekends and Wednesdays. New chapters will be posted twice weekly for the foreseeable future, but I may up it to every other today towards the end of the story.
> 
> Onwards we go, and into the last bit of calm before the storm...

_Winter's chill is in the air_   
_and I am far from home._   
_The summer gone, the harvest in, the nights draw on..._   
_but who knows what the dawn will bring?_   
_So cast your cares and fears aside,_   
_leave your worries and your tears_   
_bid farewell to yesterday_   
_and join with me and sing:_   
_Turn over! Turn over!_   
_Who knows what the dawn will bring?_   
_Turn over! Turn over!_   
_Done is done and said is said._   
_Turn over! Turn over!_   
_Now begins a brand new day._   
_Now begins a brand new day!_

_Winter's chill is in the air_   
_and home is where you are._   
_Our summer gone, our harvest in, the nights draw on..._   
_but who knows who the dawn will bring?_   
_So cast your turns and tears aside,_   
_leave your fighting and your fears_   
_be the child of yesterday_   
_and join with me and sing:_   
_Turn over! Turn over!_   
_Who knows who the dawn will bring?_   
_Turn over! Turn over!_   
_Done is done and said is said._   
_Turn over! Turn over!_   
_Now begins a brand new day._   
_Now begins a brand new day!_

_Winter's chill is in the air_   
_and I am far from home._   
_But spring awaits, and harvests new. The nights draw on_   
_but dawn will bring a brand new day!_   
_So cast your old regrets aside_   
_the time for new beginnings nears_   
_bid farewell to yesterday_   
_and join with me and sing:_   
_Turn over! Turn over!_   
_Who knows who the dawn will bring?_   
_Turn over! Turn over!_   
_Done is done and said is said._   
_Turn over! Turn over!_   
_Now begins a brand new day._   
_Now begins a brand new day._

 

**Turnover**

**High Reaches Weyr**

H'koll stood beneath a rocky lip of shelter just down from the entrance to the Hatching Sands, and peered up into the swirling snowfall. Turnover Day had dawned quite dismally, if _dawn_ was even the right word to use for the gradual lessening of darkness the Weyr had experienced that morning. The sky was still a heavy dark grey, and the only reason he could see more than a dragonlength in front of his own face was because the peaks of the Weyr itself sheltered at least _this_ side of the Weyrbowl from the worst of the weather.

“I think it's easing off a bit now.”

One of the younger weyrlings, a smallish bluerider named A'kent, had left the better shelter of the hatching sands to join him in his weather-watching. A'kent spoke with all the certain authority of youth and optimism, but H'koll didn't have the heart to set him straight, not at Turnover. Winters here were hard, especially for those new to the Weyr, and A'kent and his fellows had spent a large part of the previous day out in the worst of it. The weyrlings had made their first extended flights away from the Weyr, westwards all the way to Pars Hold. They'd got back late afternoon, just in time for an impromptu lesson on 'how to tell when your green's about to rise, and what to do when she does.' Quite off-putting, really, but it was all part of the job.

H'koll stretched out a gloved hand, and caught a few flakes for inspection. “Maybe it is getting a little lighter.” According to the sweep riders the Weyrleader had sent out at first light, the Weyr had more snow on the way, and plenty of it, at least until after lunch. After that, they'd have clear skies, appallingly cold weather and nothing but crackdust to worry about for a good sevenday or more. It was just the kind of winter that most riders preferred, but H'koll had been hoping for a lot more snow and fog. Weather permitting, the younger weyrlings would soon be starting their _between_ training in earnest. He'd been trying very hard not to think about that. Some of the weyrlings were more ready than others, but you couldn't hold back an entire clutch for the benefit of one or two.

“How's Winth today?” H'koll asked. “Not too worn out from yesterday's trip out to Pars?”

“Oh, he's fine,” A'kent said. “Sleeping right now, but he wants me to wake him for the races.” A note of whining entered the lad's voice. “If the snow ever stops long enough for them to happen...”

“Oh, aye. Fancy your chances?”

“Me? Shells, no! But I won a mark and a half on the wrestling – I drew M'arsen in the sweepstake – and R'darny has ridiculously good odds.”

“So _that_ 's why your lot weren't cheering on your assistant weyrlingmaster on, was it?”

“Oh no, sir! We were!”

“Well, I'll take your word for it. Must've got sand in my ear or something.”

The growing bruise on H'koll's shoulder, inflicted by M'arsen's hands during the wrestling competition, ached at the reminder. It was hard to believe that a man you outweighed could throw you so hard as all that, but at least he'd managed a few throws of his own this time. All that time he'd spent training the weyrlings in the sport had clearly paid off. Maybe, in another turn or two, he might have a chance of beating Sh'vek's second. Age had to catch up with the brownrider eventually, if nothing else. H'koll raised both arms above his head and into a tricep stretch, then did what he could to loosen up his back. There was a faint twinge between two of his ribs that he couldn't _really_ blame on M'arsen. Given how outrageous Ruarnoth's sexual aerobatics had been yesterday, he'd been lucky that his unconscious mimicry hadn't led to any worse than a slightly pulled muscle and a missed meal.

He considered the snow again, wondering if he should make the dash back to the Lower Caverns. The women ought to be bringing meatrolls and mulled wine over to the Hatching Sands within the hour, enough to keep the riders fed and out of the way until the evening feast was ready, but he was already feeling hungry. Was a kitchen raid worth the risk of being set to scrubbing pots for the rest of the afternoon? Not with his back aching the way it was. Growing weyrlings were always hungry: perhaps he should challenge _their_ ingenuity? He glanced across to where A'kent had been standing, and found the spot empty. Damn. _I'll just have to go hungry, I guess. Did you_ have _to pick mealtime to rise, darling?_

Ruarnoth laughed delightedly into his mind. _But we had so much fun! The wind was ticklish and gusty and playful, and I remembered the thermals we found with the young ones_. She paused, and H'koll could sense her stretching out languorously on her ledge. _I'm glad he caught me again. I think he likes how difficult I make it, and I like how far we can glide together. But I wish his rider liked_ you _better._

 _Ah, F'ren likes me well enough, just not in_ that _way. Don't trouble yourself over it, darling – we've both got company we prefer, and at least he's not one of those that runs off_ right _away afterwards._

_I should think not!_

H'koll had been expecting just such a complaint all morning. Like most dragons, Ruarnoth found it difficult to comprehend some of the complexities of human mating, especially when dragonlust was so far at odds with a man's own innate desires. If you could enjoy your mate one day, why _not_ the next? He'd never come up with a good answer to that; Faranth knew, he agreed with Ruarnoth wholeheartedly on that principle. Even so, he knew her more than well enough to be pretty sure that the dragon's wish hadn't been entirely driven by selfless regard for her rider's worth. No, she wanted more neck-twining and nuzzling time, didn't she?

_Tell you what. As soon as they get back to the Weyr, I'll speak to F'ren and see if you can join Trath in their weyr. No-one wants to perch out on a ledge today._

He made his way back into the heat of the Hatching Cavern, and tried to distract himself from his growling belly by cheering on his old Skyfrost wingmates in the spear-throwing. They'd moved on from fixed targets now, and were working on swinging sacks suspended just shy of the back wall. All the sacks bar one, the ribbon-filled smallest, were stuffed with feathers. Some turns they used flour, but the Weyr was still being frugal with its supplies, and apparently there hadn't been any to spare. Wingsecond C'fen was the winning rider in the end, earning raucous cheers from the newly re-formed Deluge Wing as well as the prize flagon of sparkling Benden White. He'd never walk without a limp again, but there was nothing at all wrong with his aim.

Lunch arrived, and by the time all the plates had been cleared the snow had eased off enough for the races to start. A'kent's luck was still in: R'darny won the sprint. H'koll felt a little sorry for the lad: the other weyrlings would inevitably clean him out over a few games of dragon-poker later on. After the races, it was time for the traditional snow-fights to begin. The Weyrlings, again traditionally, had already prepared their weaponry: snowballs of every size, some snow through and through, some filled with ice or grit, and others with less savoury centres. One big advantage of being an assistant weyrlingmaster was a guarantee not to be on the receiving end of one of _those_ snowballs. Sure enough, the Weyrlings were eventually acclaimed the Weyr's victors, and then everyone involved disappeared to clean off and get into their feast-day finery.

He was on his way back to the Hatching Cavern again when he finally spotted F'ren and his Wing. One and all, they were wearing the most ridiculous knitted hats that H'koll had ever seen. Tufts and pompoms and stripes, long flaps over the ears that might have been functional if they hadn't dangled right down to each rider's waist... and were those _ribbons_? H'koll couldn't help laughing. Faranth, who'd _made_ those... _things_? And what had F'ren bribed his Wing with to get them to all wear them? Oh, but laughing this hard made his ribs ache again, it really wasn't fair. “What _are_ you wearing?” he called out, voice cracking with the effort of getting the words out.

“They're _hats_ , H'koll. Can't you tell?” F'ren stepped out of the formation, and waved his Wing onwards towards the cavern. “My Turnover gift to the Wing, with a little help from some of the ladies of the Lower Caverns. You'll understand soon. Come on, we've challenged B'risten and your weyrlings to a game. R'fint and I will referee. I wouldn't wager too much on it, mind.”

Shaking his head, H'koll followed. “Where were you this morning? Ruarnoth wanted some company.”

“ _Someone_ has to make up for Snowfall's reprieve.”

“Slaughtering all those herdbeasts the day before last was a reprieve, was it?”

F'ren gave him a weary look. “Five hundred herdbeasts. Telgar's best, starving to death in a field, at least until we came along and put them out of their misery. Delene's right, it _would_ have been the best bargain the Weyr had ever made, if she'd only thought to include the fardling _fodder_.”

“Mmm.” H'koll had heard most of the details of the Weyr's latest logistical disaster already. “Still, meat on the ground, or meat on the hoof, it all tastes the same in the end.”

“It's meat packed in snowblocks in one of the store caves now. You try telling your dragon it tastes just the same when it's still half frozen and doesn't run away from her.”

H'koll laughed. “Maybe. At least we've no shortage of hides any more.”

“True. I'm ashamed to say I pulled rank and stuck to the throat-work, and left the skinning and the rest of the butchery to the men, but we all of us chilled our fingers to the bone hauling enough snow to finish the work. Another hour, and we'd all have been risking black-bite.” F'ren halted in his Wing's tracks, stared down at his injured hand, and wriggled the remaining fingers. “Can't afford to lose any more, can I?”

“You'll just have to make up for it with better dexterity in other... parts.”

“Better dexterity? Fardling green riders!” F'ren rolled his eyes, and resumed walking towards the Hatching Cavern.

Time to change the subject. “So where were you today, if you weren't with your Wing?” H'koll asked as he caught up again.

“I got the worst of the weather-sweep first thing, and after that I was ferrying healers in and out for the Weyrwoman, delivering last-minute messages to half the local Holds, and getting a crew together to dig out the path to the Thread-shelters down in Esvay Valley.”

“Busy morning.”

“Yeah. Feels like I'm still stretched out over half the northwest, I can tell you.”

He looked it, too. The last few months had aged F'ren noticeably, not just in the scattering of new grey hairs currently well covered by his hat-thing, but also in the imprint of tension, worry and constant exhaustion on his face. “You look terrible.”

“I'll live. Not everyone does. Worst stop this morning was the Hold. I had to break the news to Samdra's family, give them back some personal effects.”

“That never gets easier. She was the belly-score last Fall, wasn't she? Poor girl. Some Turnover gift for the family.”

“Had to do it. I'd given her leave to visit today.” F'ren looked off into the distance, eyes vague. “Shouldn't have happened, a freak thread like that. Never seen one blown so far off behind the trailing edge as that, ever.” He forced a grim smile onto his face. “At least she'll be remembered here for something. Ah well. Trath says I shouldn't dwell on things like that.”

“He's got more sense than you. You wouldn't catch _Trath_ wearing a hat like that, I'd wager.”

“Don't be silly, H'koll. Dragons don't wear hats. We'll see you in there, okay?” He gave his head a quick shake to set the tassels moving, and hurried on to rejoin his Wing.

Marching in step, Snowfall Wing entered the Hatching Cavern, F'ren once again at their head. A mixture of laughter and stunned speechlessness greeted them. H'koll had let himself trail behind a short way, distancing himself from the spectacle itself, but staying close enough to hear what was said.

“Here we are, R'fint,” F'ren said. “Are the weyrlings ready?”

R'fint rose from a spot half way up in the tiered galleries and pointed across the sand. “Over there. Sure you want to go through with this?”

“Absolutely certain. Shall we finalise the rules?”

Leaving F'ren and R'fint to settle on the technicalities, H'koll looked for B'risten amongst the snickering Weyrlings, and beckoned him to one side. “What's the plan?”

“One game of thread-stone-flame, his Wing against our Weyrlings. Losing team pays the penalty of my choice – think the barracks cess-pit could do with a dredge, don't you?”

“Doesn't it always? And if _we_ lose?”

B'risten smirked. “Not going to happen. Saw them practising just the other day, and trust me, they're dreadful.”

H'koll raised an eyebrow, pretty certain that B'risten had been thoroughly taken in. “You think?”

“That _is_ what I said.”

The Weyrlingmaster cleared his throat and called for the weyrlings attention. “Listen up, you lot! You're playing at double tempo tonight, but for Snowfall's sake we'll keep it simple and stick with thread and flame only.”

H'koll chuckled. The lack of firestone bags in play might simplify matters, but it certainly wouldn't make it any easier for either side to win.

“How many do you think you can take out in the first round?” B'risten whispered.

“Take out...wait, _we're_ playing too?” Groaning to himself, H'koll felt for Ruarnoth's mind. She was asleep, shard it, so he couldn't ask her to find out from Trath what they were all in for.

“No holding on to forfeited bags, either!” R'fint continued. “Chuck 'em to the end of the line, and they'll be doled out by D'barn, H'rack, B'risten and H'koll at their discretion. If – when – they get knocked out, the next rider along takes over.”

Now it was B'risten's turn to look alarmed. “I thought we had immunity!”

“Did you?” F'ren gave him a feral grin. “Why, do you think you're going to need it?”

B'risten's face darkened; sure sign that _that_ thread had fallen and burrowed deep. “Look at it this way, B'ris,” H'koll said. “At least _we_ won't be playing for very long.”

“No immunity,” R'fint confirmed. “You'll play as many rounds as it takes for one team to secure a win. The losers get to dig out the cess-pit in the Barracks.” The Weyrlingmaster paused long enough for the groans to subside, then gestured with a finger at the gathered weyrlings. “And – and! – if you lot let me down tonight, you'll have the honour of wearing Snowfall's...ah... _hats_ until sunrise.”

So _that_ was what they were really for, was it? A quick glance at the faces of his charges proved his suspicions correct: barely a single one of the weyrlings was keeping a straight face. “You sly bastard,” H'koll muttered under his breath to F'ren, through well-gritted teeth. The bronze rider's only reply was to mouth something that looked a lot like it might have been 'better dexterity'.

Still visibly fuming, B'risten clapped his hands together. “Right then, weyrlings, you know how the game is played. Get in your lines, and start passing out the bags. Remember, the bigger they are, the more of a target they make. H'koll, you take the far end, opposite D'barn.”

H'koll took his place alongside the weyrlings, while Snowfall lined up opposite. The sack containing the small bags of shells and seeds finally made it to his end of the group, and he pulled out his allotted six bags at random: five white bags representing threads, and a single orangy-brown flame-bag. Keeping one of each bag free he quickly tucked the rest up his left sleeve, and tossed the remaining two back and forth between his hands, getting a feel for how well they'd fly. It looked like he'd be on the offensive, at least until the first re-supply. He looked over at his opponents, wondering who would be the best choice for his first target, and who would target him in turn. Hold a thread bag in one hand and catch the flame-bag thrown at you with the other and you'd be safe, and vice versa. Catch the wrong bag, and both were forfeit to the opposing team. Fail to catch the bag at all, and if it hit you, you were out. The other rules varied, mostly those dealing with the dark-brown firestone bags and how much trading was allowed amongst your own team, but not by much. The main functions of the game were to improve a rider's hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness and reaction speed – and, like most weyrling games, to foster a sense of team spirit. Directly across from him, D'barn also held one of each type of bag, as did the next six riders along from him. P'lok was the nearest rider to H'koll who was holding two thread-bags. Right, P'lok it was, then.

By then, R'fint and F'ren had taken their referees' places at either end of the long gap between the two teams. F'ren signalled the drummers to start the beat. “Start play on ten.”

H'koll kept his eyes on D'barn's face – P'lok wasn't going anywhere – while he counted out the drumbeats and decided on his second target. Not that he was likely to need one...he and B'risten would surely be among Snowfall's first targets. On the fifth stroke, the normally staid D'barn _winked_ at him. H'koll flicked his gaze back down the line of Snowfall riders. Two riders down from D'barn, Avret had decided to go on the defensive, switching to two flame-bags. Nothing that affected his own play, mind.

On the ninth drumbeat, D'barn suddenly crossed his eyes and peeled the corners of his mouth back with his fingers, then poked out a waggling tongue. H'koll almost choked. “Distraction costs lives!” he gasped as the tenth drumbeat sounded, but it was already far, far too late. Every last one of Snowfall's riders was pulling a ridiculous face of some description, half the weyrlings were in stitches...and both of P'lok's bags had turned orange, H'koll realised as he threw his white thread-bag at the brownrider's face. Dropping his orange flame-bag to the ground, H'koll pulled another thread-bag from his sleeve in time to catch the first of the flame-bags thrown his way...but it was only one of half a dozen, three of which hit home.

Raising his hands in the air in defeat, H'koll stepped back from the line. Only four of the weyrlings joined him: Snowfall must have been coordinating their throws.

“Three...two...one...” R'fint chanted as the drummer counted the weyrlings and riders in to the next round. Snowfall had lost ten players, which ought to have put B'risten and the weyrlings at an advantage...but the instant the bags started flying through the air again, H'koll knew he'd been playing on the losing side.

It was all over very, very quickly: not _quite_ the shortest game H'koll had ever been part of, but certainly not far off it. Thirteen weyrlings stepped out of line after the second round, and over the course of four more throws Snowfall reduced the weyrling team to B'risten alone, suffering only two further losses on their side of the line. B'risten couldn't even take any pride in being the last man standing – the deluge of bags he was pelted with in the final round were the first ones that Snowfall had deigned to send his way. H'koll didn't think it would _stop_ the brownrider mocking Snowfall...but perhaps he'd think twice before doing so in F'ren's earshot.

The weyrlings were still discussing their humiliating defeat over dinner. By then, some of them even appeared to have grown attached to their new headgear. H'koll had tied the ear-flaps up behind his head, to stop them getting into his food. B'risten had stuffed his inside a second, bigger hat, in a vain attempt to cover it up. He'd also added a bleak scowl, and had barely said a word since the meal had started. No loss there, H'koll reckoned. Tearing off a piece of soft bread, he mopped up the last of the rich wine sauce on his plate, and looked across the table at the Weyrlingmaster, the only man there still with a bare head. “Did you know how badly we'd be outmatched today, R'fint?”

“Hmm? I had my suspicions, nothing more. But don't you deny you had some of those yourself, you and your lady-green.”

“Ruarnoth slept through the whole thing. Sure, I guessed F'ren had something or other planned, just not the specifics.” A thought occurred to him, and he raised his wine-glass to salute the Weyrlingmaster. “You _used_ Snowfall to teach the Weyrlings some humility, didn't you?” he said quietly.

The twinkle in R'fint's eye was answer enough. “Did I? How clever of me.”

“Do they always get so swollen-headed at this point in their training?” The older Weyrlings were being particularly frustrating at present – they weren't learning _new_ skills any more, just honing the ones they already had. Half of them seemed to think that meant they were ready to join the fighting wings, which only went to show how far they still had to go.

“But H'koll! They know _everything_ , and we're just holding them back...” R'fint smiled at the weyrling sitting beside him, taking the edge off the mockery in his voice. “Isn't that right?”

“Sir?”

“Ah, don't answer that. I wouldn't like the answer, I'm sure. No, I can't say I'm disappointed to see a bit of cohesion in that Wing again, not with Kiath's lot due to graduate sooner than I'd like. Thank Faranth that Sh... well, thank Faranth for that.”

“Have you decided when we'll start shepherding them up into the fighting levels?”

Cutlery clattered onto plates, as the Weyrlings around them started listening in in earnest. R'fint idly pushed a slice of tuber across his plate. “I'm going to backtrack to some intensive rope drills first, see if we can get the human reactions closer to the dragons' speed. Then we'll bring a couple of pairs up in each of the next few Threadfalls, and ta-” He broke off mid-word, and smiled. “Well, look who's here. I wonder if that's a good sign.”

H'koll twisted round on the bench and followed the Weyrlingmaster's gaze towards the entrance to the dining hall. There was the Weyrwoman, well supported by both Sh'vek and C'nir, slow and slightly stumbling, but still clearly walking under her own power. The gathered Weyrfolk erupted into spontaneous cheers, chanting their Weyrwoman's name. It seemed to buoy her up a little: she straightened, and lifted a hand from C'nir's shoulder to acknowledge the reaction.

“I was worried she'd worsened. F'ren mentioned bringing in a couple of Healers to see her today, but I guess they were just making sure she was up to this.” H'koll watched the trio pass by the weyrlings' table, but his thoughts had already moved on to the coming Turn's threadfalls, and the difference it'd make to the weyrlings' safety having three queens flying the lowest level rather than just the one. Would that happen before or after the older weyrlings got blooded? “When do you think she'll be flying again, R'fint?”

“Ah, _now_ you're thinking like a Weyrlingmaster.” Now it was R'fint's turn to peer over his shoulder, as both men watched Maenida's slowing approach to the Weyrleaders' table. She was breathing heavily, unused to the effort. The weyrlingmaster's expression was grave when he turned back again. “Not soon. Nor at all, I fear.”

“Why? She _looks_ like she's finally getting better.”

“Do you see weyrwoman Delene?”

H'koll scanned the room, passing over the weyrwoman's empty chair on the top table, the serving-staff dashing to and from the kitchens, G'dil sitting with the rest of his Wing, and the favoured huddle of women around the Headwoman. “No.”

“That's because she's sitting with Kiath up in the Weyrwoman's weyr, the same way someone has been every day these past few months. Maenida may be walking, H'koll, but you mark my words: she's a long way from anything resembling _better_.''

“But if she's _not_ getting any be-” H'koll fell silent, warned by R'fint's rapidly narrowing eyes.

“Not here,” the Weyrlingmaster said. “I want you to keep out of all that, you hear? Head down, concentrate on the weyrlings, and leave the speculation to the bronzeriders. Got you and B'risten both trained up the way I like now – more or less – and I'd rather not have to start from scratch with someone new.”

H'koll nodded silently, and watched as Maenida almost collapsed into her seat. If a Weyrwoman couldn't carry out her job any more, she was meant to retire. Or _be_ retired, by her Weyrleader, if she couldn't or wouldn't make that decision herself. Why _hadn't_ the Weyrleader done just that already? It was inevitable that Delene would be Weyrwoman next anyway – so why wait?

“H'koll...” R'fint's voice held a faint wheedling tone, of the kind favoured by the Weyr's old aunties when they were addressing a small child who wasn't paying attention. It certainly got H'koll's. “You're thinking about it now, aren't you?”

“Shells, R'fint. That's like telling someone not to scratch an itch, that is.”

"Good analogy, that. Scratching always makes it _worse_.” He sighed, and resumed poking at the last tubers on his plate with his fork. “This place hasn't fallen apart yet, and it's in good hands now, so don't worry about Delene being Senior Weyrwoman.”

A pair of Lower Caverns women appeared, bearing heavy trays holding the next course of the feast: fine fish fillets garnished with herbs and stewed seabeachplums, cracked-grains steeped in a buttery sauce, and more hot crusty loaves still steaming from the ovens. The food tasted as delicious as it looked and smelled, and drove all thoughts of Weyr politics out of H'koll's mind. Five more courses followed, before the plates and cups were cleared away, and the tables and benches stacked ready for cleaning in the morning. The dining hall was abandoned in favour of the larger inner cavern, and the music that was already beginning to fill the air with sound.

H'koll sat out the first handful of reels, giving his food a little more time to settle. The first few were mostly for the children, anyway – the little ones would be packed off to bed soon, but the harper made sure to play some of their favourites before they left. After that, the tempo went up, and the steps became ever more complex, until a mass collision of drunken weyrfolk had the harpers switch back to a slightly more sedate tune that anyone could manage, however much they'd eaten or drunk. Bored by the slower music, which had been swiftly monopolised by the older weyrfolk and those smitten with their current partners, H'koll went to find another drink while he waited for the next dance more to his taste.

Between dances – and during some of them – H'koll kept a careful eye of the weyrlings. For some, it was the first Turnover they'd experienced outside of their old Holds and Crafthalls. Many traditions were the same right across Pern, but not everyone was used to the more uninhibited celebrations of the Weyr. That sometimes led to awkwardness, but the more usual problem with weyrlings, so R'fint had told him, was over-indulgence and over-exuberance. The wine on the weyrlings' table had been carefully watered, but he didn't doubt they'd got hold of some purer booze by now. And there were other ways to get in trouble, too. Runa had latched herself onto the arm of an older brownrider – an intricate dance, and she was managing the steps foot-perfect, so she likely wasn't so drunk she'd go too far by accident, later on. He poked Ruarnoth to remind both their dragons to suggest their riders cool things a little. H'ralden, another greenrider, was also getting a little more intimate than was good for weyrlings in general, but in his case he was probably just enjoying the fact that he could be comfortable in his own skin for the first time in his life. H'koll sent another nudge via Ruarnoth, and H'ralden raised his hands from his dance partner's backside in acknowledgement. On the other side of the dancers, O'speer was looking very uncomfortable. Well, they'd all get accustomed to the way things were eventually, and maybe it was just indigestion. _Please tell Jeth to tell O'speer to find a privy if he wants to vomit_ , he asked Ruarnoth, then walked over to where R'fint was standing.

“I feel like an old, Hold auntie watching over a bevy of eligible daughters.”

“With dragonriders at the gather, and _who knows what_ on their minds?” R'fint added. “Strangely obtuse, those aunties. Until they get you in a corner, that is. Then all bets are off.”

H'koll tugged on one of his hat-tails. “At least it's easy to spot the weyrlings in the crowd.”

“Only when they're _in_ the crowd,” B'risten said as he joined them. He was still scowling, but had lost both of his hats somewhere. “Going to be a long night. A'lar's back in his own bed, dead to the world. D'vay's in the kitchen, scrubbing pots.”

H'koll held out his wineskin to the other assistant weyrlingmaster. “Found some Benden white. It's only tithe-quality, not the good stuff, but... want some?”

B'risten took the skin, and took a deep swig. “Shells, I needed that.” He offered up a smaller, sealed leather flask from where it was hanging from a belt-loop. “Confiscated this from A'lar. Couldn't get out of him where the still is, but it won't make you blind. Not right off, anyway.”

“I think I'll pass. Maybe when I'm done with dancing for the night.” He'd seen E'zar earlier, dancing with S'kloss. Maybe if he could catch his eye...

 _No need_ , Ruarnoth said. _I've asked Hieth if his rider is done with dancing with him._

_Hieth?_

_Well, yes. I could tell Pazath what you_ really _want, but where's the fun in that?_

_Faranth, you're a dear. Hang on, I think S'kloss is coming over. I hope you didn't give them the wrong idea..._

Breathless from his dance, S'kloss stood with his hands on his hips for a few moments before he spoke. “E'zar said you turned him down earlier, but he kept looking over. You're in there, man!”

H'koll grinned. “You think? Not just the make-the-other-man-jealous thing?”

“Well now. _That_ 's a nice thought. But if it was, I rather think it was aimed at you. He told me Pazath nearly caught your Ruarnoth yesterday.”

That _had_ been the plan. Well, more like an idea than a plan. “Thought they were close.”

“Speaking of flights,” S'kloss turned to R'fint, “what are you teaching the weyrlings these days? I encouraged O'reb to send Mannifeth after Faiette's Laorath, thought they could do with some experience chasing a more mature dragon, and he caught her almost before they were out of sight of the bowl.”

“What I don't know about training riders isn't _worth_ knowing. Told you they were good, didn't I?”

“At this rate, they'll be ready for seconds-knots well before L'sen's ready to retire his. And I'd hate to lose them to another Wing.”

The smug look R'fint had been wearing faded swiftly. “No. You _don't_ want that. He's too young for that kind of notice, he'd just get spoiled and wasted. Ten turns down the line, we'd sorely miss the rider he's going to make some day. Weyrmating might help keep him out of trouble. There's a few likely young women from Kiath's last clutch. I'll see if I can get them in your Wing, and leave the matchmaking to you.”

“I thought we kept out of Weyr politics?” H'koll muttered under his breath.

R'fint gave him a sidelong look. “ _You_ do. When _you're_ Weyrlingmaster, you can choose otherwise. Go. Go find E'zar for that dance.”

H'koll left, before R'fint could make a proper order of it. The Harpers had started playing again already, but he managed to track down E'zar in time to share the next dance with him, and half a dozen more after that. Time passed almost without either of them noticing, and the eventual cessation of the music came as a surprise to both men. H'koll was just about to make a loud suggestion of what the Harpers should play next, when E'zar figured out why they'd stopped.

“Shard it, it must be midnight already. I'd better find the rest of my Wing. Catch you later, 'kay?”

The cavern was rapidly emptying as the Weyrfolk hurried out into the bowl. H'koll joined the crowd, half-jogging as he weaved his way through towards the front, hoping to find a good position by the lake.

 _That way_ , Ruarnoth hinted to him, and H'koll went left around the slow group of oldsters ahead of him. On the far side, he found himself keeping pace with the new weyrwoman. “Been enjoying the evening, Rahnis?”

She smiled at him. “Very much, now all the work's done with. Looked like you were enjoying yourself too, earlier. What are we all doing out here though? Everyone left, and I followed, but no-one has actually said what _for_.”

“Just watch. Here, they'll make room for a weyrwoman. There's a good spot over there just shy of the pier.” He led her through to his chosen vantage point, a rocky outcrop jutting into the water. “Good view, right?”

“Not sure what of...”

On the opposite side of the pier, Sh'vek walked free of the gathered crowd. “Men and women of the High Reaches!” he said, his voice pitched to carry. “The sun has set on one Turn, and with the dawn, we start the next. Let us put behind us the trials of the past months, and think instead of all the good things we've experienced together. One hundred and two babies were born to the Weyr, and thirty-one dragons. We also welcomed fifty-one dragons and their riders into the fighting wings. For forty-two of those pairs, the long fight continues, and we salute them in their youth and fortitude, as dragonriders of the High Reaches!”

Six young riders emerged from the crowd, led by C'nir and his two wingseconds. The riders lined up along the pier, and one by one the Weyrleader announced their names to the crowds. This was the cue for the crowds to cheer, and for the wingseconds to throw each man or woman into the lake. “From Cloudburst Wing, W'sull, Iggith's rider. Fr'bid, Galliath's rider. Sl'elt, Degrenth's rider. Pr'dash, Allenth's rider. Challa, Marieth's rider. Benella, Bridrinth's rider.”

As the last rider hit the water, Sh'vek turned back to the crowd, and said, “May they live to fly through Thread-free skies!” The sentiment was echoed back to him, and he called the next Wing forwards.

Another handful of riders got their midnight bath. H'koll looked over at Rahnis to see what the new weyrwoman made of it all. She seemed to be wincing as each rider hit the water.

“Don't worry,” H'koll said, “it's not as cold as you might think. There've been pipes diverting the hot water from the springs all afternoon. And see, look where they're getting out the water, there's towels and hot drinks all waiting, and a brand new fur for each of them.”

“Oh! Maybe it's not as bad as it looks, then. This is traditional, I take it?”

“Along with the weyrling snowball fights, yeah.”

“I missed those. Lower Caverns women have Turnover traditions of their own though.”

“Yeah? What _do_ the women get up to? I thought it was all just hard work, getting the feast ready?”

Rahnis gave a low chuckle. “Hardly. It's just a meal, after all. There's plenty of work at the start, and enough left over to saddle the shirkers with – and any nosy dragonriders – but the rest is all good fun, mostly. Never knew there were so many things you could do with a skein of wool before today.” She gave him an odd look. “Speaking of wool, what's with the hat? I thought it was just the Weyrlings, but look, there's F'ren with one too. I'm sure I saw one of Quaiya's girls working on one just like it a few days back, but I didn't fancy commenting on how dreadful it looked. Are they some kind of _punishment_?”

“Might as well be,” H'koll said. F'ren was making his way towards them, still wearing his own woollen monstrosity. “I think I'll let him explain. Hey, F'ren! Why are _you_ still wearing that thing? I'd have thought you'd have ditched it by now.”

“It's fardling cold tonight. Pretty sure I'm going to appreciate it sooner or later.” F'ren had that predatory gleam in his eye, just like he'd had right before his Wing gave the weyrlings their thrashing.

“Stop it. Whatever you've got planned, count _me_ out of it.”

“Shells, is it _that_ obvious? It wasn't even my idea – you can blame S'kloss this time, but with his Wing going last, he can't get back in time.”

“Back in time for what?” Rahnis asked.

“To rectify an omission,” F'ren said. “Now...hang on H'koll, I paid you for better stitching than that!'' He stretched a hand forward, and pulled at the collar of Rahnis' heavy coat. “Look, the seam's coming loose here.”

What was he talking about? H'koll knew fardling well nothing of the sort could possibly have happened to his handiwork. “What?” he and Rahnis said together.

“ _You_ paid?” Rahnis continued as she started to shrug off her coat. “I don't think so, F'ren.”

H'koll was about to reach out his hand to take it from her when Ruarnoth bespoke him. _Trath says you need to take your shoes off._

Why would he need to lose his... ohhh. _What do you think, Ruarnoth?_

_I think, after all that dancing, you could do with a bath. I can almost smell you from here._

H'koll sniffed at his sleeve. _Liar!_

_Well I hope she can swim._

_Course she can, she's Istan. If not... well, that's why F'ren needs help, though I expect it'll be more me stopping her from drowning_ him. H'koll finally got his hands on the coat, just as the last of Windfire Wing's new riders hit the water. While Rahnis' attention was split between the youngsters swimming back to shore and H'koll's inspection of the no-less-than-perfect seam, he kicked off his own shoes.

“May they all live to fly through Thread-free skies!” chanted the Weyrfolk once again.

Sh'vek followed with the traditional final words. “Faranth willing, so may we all.”

At the foot of the pier, S'kloss saluted the Weyrleader. “Weyrleader, we also welcomed a new weyrwoman to the Weyr. Weyrwoman Rahnis!” He lifted his hands and encouraged the Weyrfolk to chant her name. Before she could move out of reach, H'koll slipped one arm around her, F'ren did the same on her other side, and they started to pull her towards the pier.

“I _hadn't_ forgotten,” Sh'vek said, scanning the wrong part of the crowd, “but I hardly think...” By the time he spotted them, they were all running down the pier, Rahnis' feet only touching the ground every few strides, and a growing cheer behind them.

“Oh no,” she said, “don't you _dare_. F'ren, H'koll, I swear, even if it _isn't_ freez...” She broke off into a shriek as the two men leapt off the end of the pier, pulling her with them.

H'koll let go before they all hit the water, and tried not to make too big a splash. He wiped the cold water out of his eyes and slicked back his hair – heated or not, it was a big lake and still very cold – and checked on the weyrwoman. She'd surfaced fine, and was also treading water comfortably. Seeing him, she slapped her hand against the lake surface and sent a splash of water arcing towards his head. F'ren – rather wisely, he now realised – had twisted into a proper dive, and come up out of her reach.

“All right, weyrwoman?” H'koll could see her teeth chattering already, and he was pretty sure that her skirts weren't making the swim easy. He swam closer, and flicked his head in the direction of the ladder bolted to the side of the stone pier, where S'kloss and the Weyrleader were waiting.

“Oh, I'm _fine_! You... _both_ of you owe me a new dress.” She twisted over onto her back, and glared over in F'ren's direction. “And I want my shoes back, F'ren.”

They'd slipped theirs off in advance, but of course she hadn't had the warning. F'ren winced, ducked underwater, and surfaced again almost right away. “Shells, it's cold down there,” he said. “Sure you want them back? They'll be ruined, anyhow.”

“Ohhhh, yes.”

F'ren swore, and dived back under the water. Rahnis turned again, and swam on towards the pier. H'koll kept close behind, ready to assist if necessary. She was a strong swimmer, but the waterlogged weight of cloth she was wearing added a lot of drag, and she'd have trouble on the ladder. He ended up giving her a boost towards the Weyrleader's outstretched hand, partly to help her out, and partly using her as a shield against catching Sh'vek's eyes. The Weyrleader did _not_ look amused by the stunt, not even when S'kloss pre-emptively jumped into the water when Rahnis made to push him in too. There weren't any spare furs left by then, and only wet towels. Sh'vek wrapped a shivering Rahnis in his own coat, and dispersed the crowd.

Letting S'kloss go up the ladder next, H'koll looked back over his shoulder for F'ren. He was beginning to become slightly concerned by the fact that he couldn't spot him when a dark head, minus hat, surfaced beside him: F'ren, clutching a pair of shoes in one hand.

F'ren slung them up onto the stone pier, and pulled himself up out of the water by the other hand. He hung there on the ladder, watching the Weyrleader walking Rahnis away. “Shard it,” he muttered, and thoughtlessly reached up for the next rung with his maimed hand. He slipped, and fell heavily into the water before spluttering back to the surface again. “Shard it!”

“Here, let me help.” H'koll pushed F'ren upwards, giving him a squeeze on the arse for good measure. From the top of the ladder, F'ren glared back at him. H'koll laughed. “Just because you missed your chance, you expect _me_ to pass up the opportunity?”

A resigned F'ren reached down his hand and pulled H'koll up in turn, but no sooner had he done so than he was back to watching the departing weyrfolk once more. H'koll thought he had a pretty good idea why, and really, it was probably for the best. Maybe F'ren _was_ calming down his ambitions... a little. There was more to life than where you were in the hierarchy; maybe almost dying a few times had finally brought that fact home to him. H'koll hoped so, anyway. “C'mon, F'ren, we'll catch cold if we stay out here much longer. I'm sure I can spread enough word of your prowess to get someone to volunteer to warm you up. Failing that...”

“No. I'm done for tonight. Feeling a bit too fuzzy. Gonna spend some time with Trath, Sober up a little. Wine's really gone to my head tonight.” He raised an arm, and beckoned the dragon down from their weyr.

H'koll decided to test his theory. “Should I send Denna up to you?”

F'ren shook his head and smiled. “She left a bag of live tunnelsnakes up there last time she visited. I'm not joking, she really did that. What about you?”

“Think I'll join the others, see if I can't find E'zar again.” He gave the bronzerider a wave as Trath landed by the lake, and hurried off to get warm and dry again. There were still plenty more hours to fill before the new Turn dawned.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 'bad decisions' tag is up there for a very good reason. All other tags are current and accurate.

_Yesterday is another's Hold_  
 _held by the foolish and the bold_  
 _alike, but likewise lost to those_  
 _who would move on and Hold anew._  
 _I loved you then, had loved you long_  
 _while others--_

_\--Tenner, cease this song_  
 _and dance, and tell me now the truth._  
 _Your heart is hers, deny it not._  
 _I know her wiles, her Weyrish ways..._

_\--I know she saved your life and mine_  
 _She fought the Bitran bandits, all!_  
 _And scoured their caves the whole night long._  
 _She found us in the nick of time_  
 _and all for love of me and mine._  
 _I care not what our fathers say._  
 _I care not for my Hold, nor yours._  
 _My brother now will Hold my land_  
 _and, if you wish it, take your hand._  
 _My hands, my feet, my body whole_  
 _are Weyrward bound, to find my soul._

_Excerpt from T'ner of Telgar, Part II_

 

**Afternoon, 8.1.35**

**Crom**

Sparkling in the sunlight beneath Alaireth's broad wings, the Crom river marked the eastern border of the lands protected by High Reaches Weyr. Off to the west, deep grey clouds clung to the lower foothills of the mountains, ending in a heavy bank that lay almost directly above the river. The blazing fireheights of both Keogh and Nabol Holds added their own patches of smoky darkness to the skies. Neither really needed to have bothered; one could never tell _exactly_ how far north or south of its expected track a Threadfall would occur, but the chances of either of the main Holds themselves being threatened by this particular fall were slim to non-existent. Their croplands were another matter.

Rahnis raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, and squinted eastwards up at the fighting wings. Telgar had sent a single flight to cover their part of the Fall, arrayed in three wide rows that spanned the full corridor at differing heights. The three gold dragons of their Queens' Wing circled idly beneath them, one for each of the Fighting Wings. Judging by the speed of the uppermost Wing, it was keeping pace with where the leading edge of the Fall _should_ be, but only a handful of dragons were actively flaming. On the other side of the border, High Reaches Weyr waited in full strength. The falling threads would soon encounter the unseasonably warm air driven up the Esvay valley, and that'd be the end of all the crackdust.

 _I have permission from Relgath_ , Alaireth said, and shared the visual that Telgar's old queen had given her. _Shall we go?_

Rahnis made a final quick check of the closing gap between the dragons of both Weyrs. _Got it. Let's go._

They emerged from _between_ wing-tip distance from Relgath, just close enough for a shouted conversation if you didn't mind straining your voice. Relgath was making good use of the thermals above the bare ground of the flood plain. The old queen was greening heavily around her joints, much like Carth back at Ista, and her neck had grown slightly wattled with age. Even so, she was clearly still fit to fight Thread with her rider. Weyrwoman Prua was well covered by a thick blanket on top of her flying leathers, but her face and neck were kept warm by only a small, thin scarf, wrapped tightly. No one wanted to wear anything that Thread could gorge itself on where you couldn't easily spot it or feel it.

Prua pulled a loop of fabric down from her mouth and nose and gave a Rahnis a cheery smile. “This makes a nice change, doesn't it!”

“Crackdust over Crom?” Rahnis shouted back at her. “At least one of our Weyrs got lucky.”

Prua waggled a finger at her.

 _Relgath says we must have brought our Istan winter weather north with us,_ Alaireth relayed.

 _If only!_ Rahnis grimaced back at the cloud bank, and the snowcapped peaks that pierced it in the far distance, and shook her head. _Ask Relgath if they had many live ones._

_Relgath says no. Even flying only three Wings, she says that many of Telgar's dragons will return to their Weyr without having charred a single thread, and the her rider has barely used her flamethrower at all. They could have managed with just the one Wing, if they didn't have so much land to cover._

_Can we persuade them to linger through the changeover?_

Prua looked out to the west, then raised her arm and made a throwing gesture. Several dozen lengths beyond her, Ondarth, Telgar's future senior queen in all but name, vanished _between_. “Biarta's gone to have a closer look for me,” the old Weyrwoman yelled. “You worried, girl?”

“Word is we should expect a sudden transition, right on the border.” Rahnis still struggled to differentiate between freezing-cold and crackdust-cold herself, but the sweepriders had been unanimous in their verdict. Telgar might've had harmless crackdust all morning, but the High Reaches Wings would be facing live thread.

Prua clipped a line onto the pivot-mount of her adapted flamethrower, locking it into position. “Might be a tricky handover. We've got reserves ready back at the Weyr, just in case, and we'll be bunching up on our side until the trailing edge passes. What does Weyrleader Sh'vek have planned?”

_Any change there, Alaireth?_

_Not that I'm aware of. I don't think the Weyrleader likes to make changes so close to Threadfall._

_No, I've noticed that too._ “Transverse sweeps pacing the fall, switching levels on each pass,” she shouted across to Prua. Snowfall were taking the leading edge, for the first time since she'd spoken to Sh'vek about them, but at least they'd be starting out on the lower flight. With only a third of a full threadfall to fight and freedom to switch in fresher dragons as needed, she thought they ought to be able to manage it.

 _Relgath and her rider approve,_ Alaireth said. _They've passed the word on to Stennath and P'nilken, who lead for Telgar today. Stennath bespeaks Ormaith and tells him what he can, but it is hard to know how heavily the threads are falling when so much of it is crackdust. Relgath asks me to hold my position so that Ondarth can use me as a mark._

Several seconds later, the younger Telgar queen emerged from _between_. Ondarth was a dark gold in colour, small of build and almost delicate-looking. Biarta was as unlike her dragon as a rider could be, broad-shouldered and buxom, her flamethrower slung effortlessly from one arm. She cupped her other hand to her mouth and yelled across the air. “Live threads won't be a problem on our side of the river. They'll have a few dragonlengths before it hits them, but no more than that. What say you, Rahnis? Want some company?”

“If Telgar can spare you, please! There's only so much ground we can cover on our own.”

 _Ondarth asks for a visual_ , Alaireth told her. _I've warned the others to expect us back. Shall we go?_

Rahnis gave Biarta a wave, and firmed up her own visual in her mind. _Let's go. But tell Ormaith that Ondarth has offered to help, first._ Back beneath the Wings of High Reaches Weyr, Alaireth introduced Ondarth and Biarta to the other members of the so-called Queens' Wing. Green Lanzith and pregnant Maselle, and R'gen and Rith, who had almost fully recovered from their injuries, but were still a few days short of rejoining their Wing on the upper levels.

Biarta gave each of the other riders a cheery wave. “And Delene? What's she up to? Still sitting it out with your Weyrwoman?”

“Where else?” Rahnis yelled back. To save her voice, she asked Alaireth to explain that Linnebith would still join them if two dragons required an ambulance service at the same time. If Alaireth herself needed assistance with that duty, they'd been planning to call on assistant weyrlingmaster B'risten and brown Janguath. As experienced as the brownrider was with weyrlings, having another queen on hand to help was a lot more reassuring. Hopefully, neither queen would be needed. _Tell Ondarth and Ormaith that we'll concentrate our attention on the mid-level airspace between the clouds and the lower flight, particularly towards the leading edge and the Wings there. If Ondarth could chase the trailing edge as far as the snowline, and keep beneath the clouds to watch the ground for any sign of burrows, that'd be most useful to us._ It would also put the other queen at less risk. Biarta might be far more experienced than she was, and Telgar's senior Weyrwoman in everything but name, but that was no reason to give her the harder job, not on High Reaches Weyr's territory. _I'll send Lanzith and Rith with her for backup. Ask Ormaith if we can call on some of the second shift dragons to chase down any strays. A small group of five or so – greens would be safest for us; they'll be more likely to keep their distance._

_Ondarth is happy, but says we can ask for more help than just that if we need it. Ormaith says to wait for word. His rider wants to choose for us himself._

_That'll do fine. He knows them better than we do._ Sh'vek seemed to have mellowed recently, or maybe she was just learning better how to approach him with requests. Nearly a full month had passed since she'd offered F'ren her help with Snowfall, and although Sh'vek hadn't demoted him in the end, he _had_ taken a lot of the pressure off the Wing, if not its Wingleader. It had been a relief indeed to learn that the Weyrleader _could_ be reasonable; Rahnis didn't think Vallenka would ever have backed down on an entrenched course of action like that. With F'ren's Wing bearing less of the brunt of the Threadfighting and Alaireth supporting them closely, the riders and dragons were all making slow but steady progress, learning anew how to rely on themselves and on each other. They still weren't past the trailing edge, so the saying went, but at least they all had flame enough to survive the fight.

Alaireth banked, circling back round again to hold station above the river. Rahnis called out to Biarta as they passed close. “Is P'nilken leading your Wings regularly now?”

Biarta shook her head. “Different man every Fall.” Ondarth made a sharp turn and took up position close to Alaireth, well within range of her rider's lungs. “The Wingleaders are taking turns to lead the Weyr,” Biarta explained, “and their seconds are doing the same with each Wing. Gives the Weyr a chance to see what everyone's made of – and gives the bronzeriders a chance to back off if they decide they're not up to it. Not every man is, eh?”

She'd forgotten that Biarta could be so tactless. _“_ How soon before Ondarth rises?”

“Another month, maybe two. By then, we'll know who we ought to let catch us. P'nilken's in with a good chance!”

It sounded like a sensible plan. Rahnis scanned the sky again, checking on the progress of Telgar's Wings. There were still a few good minutes of flying time separating the dragons of the two Weyrs. She ran through her pre-fight equipment checklist one final time: tank-straps secured, pipework hanging freely, protective baffles all correctly in place to protect Alaireth's hide from _between_ -chilled metal, the tank-valves opened, spray-head set to produce a long-range, narrow flame, and the two safety-catches engaged. She gave the wand a few well-practised test-swings, changing her grip as she passed the apparatus over Alaireth's neck. The cut-offs clunked reassuringly smoothly as each hand let go. You didn't want either of _those_ to seize up _between_ , or you'd flame your own dragon's head off, just like Larren of Igen had nearly done. She stowed the flamethrower back in its carry-mount, and watched as Biarta repeated her own checks.

_Not long now, Alaireth dear._

_I know._

Alaireth's mind was sharply focused, and Rahnis could sense her reaching out to the minds of other dragons. She wasn't just checking in with the Weyr's Wingleaders, as they'd done back in Ista; instead, Alaireth's mind held as many facets as her whirling eyes, as her consciousness glancingly touched the Weyr's full complement of dragons. There were no thoughts behind her touch, no words to be communicated, just the reassurance that a queen dragon flew with them all and could be called upon at need.

 _Kiath doesn't mind me doing this._ Alaireth explained almost apologetically. _Ormaith also approves. I'd be doing it for Trath's Wing in any case._

 _How_ is _Snowfall Wing?_ Rahnis ran over F'ren's complement of riders and dragons in her head. The better she'd got to know them, the more impossible F'ren's task had seemed... and yet, they _were_ starting to gel together now, the despair that had been grinding them down now reforged into a strange sense of collective pride. They were still the misfits of the Weyr, but they were starting to become _his_ misfits, just as Sh'vek had said they would have been M'ton's. At the very least, there hadn't been any further 'accidents'. P'lok was _still_ a worry, but he was steadily coming to terms with his fears, and would be stronger for them eventually. More concerning to Rahnis were riders like W'rint and N'mark and V'mok, the ones who could be _relied_ on to act unpredictably for whatever reason. W'rint was still likely to lose his head in the clouds for real one of these days, and if N'mark hadn't managed to come to terms with life as a greenrider after six turns, there wasn't much chance he'd ever settle down completely. As for V'mok, they were still none the wiser over where he was getting his fellis from. Most likely a Hold; she was pretty sure the Weyr's supplies were well secured. Perhaps he was even making the tincture himself?

Alaireth's answer was focused purely on the dragons. _They believe they're ready. But we will see. Most of the dragons are fit. Zallackuth knows to listen when I tell him not to fly himself too hard. Aballath has aged a lot, it's true, but she's still as hale as any other dragon of her turns, and wishes she weren't stuck back at the Weyr. She'll recover to fight again. Sacquith is the only one that concerns me. Something bothers him, but he keeps it well hidden._

_Sk'barn... he seems fine to me. But keep close watch, if he worries you._

_Trath is unhappiest of all right now,_ Alaireth added.

That was a surprise to her. _Why?_

_I think I know. Look, there._

Five dragons appeared from _between_ a dozen dragonlengths distant, one blue and four greens. Rahnis recognised two of them instantly by sight: the blue was Sacquith with Sk'barn, and the last green in line was Searchrider P'retton's Norvith. She was pretty sure she knew who the other three green pairs were as well. _Faranth, they're_ all _from Snowfall, are they? What does F'ren say?_

_Sacquith and Sk'barn, Puteth and F'sigger, Vartine and Betchath, Denna and Ulleth, and P'retton with Norvith. Trath refuses to repeat what his rider is saying, but he assures me that they're some of the better dragons in the Wing, and they'll keep us safe. I give them their instructions now, and I tell Trath we'll take good care of them while they fly with us._

_He knows we didn't ask for_ his _dragons specifically? No, don't bother checking, he'll know it was Sh'vek. So much for that theory._ Rahnis waved to the new arrivals as they took up their stations off Alaireth's left side. _Anyway, we've no time for any of us to worry about that now._

High above, far enough away to be almost inaudible, bronze Ormaith bellowed, giving the signal for the dragons and riders of High Reaches Weyr to begin their own fight against the falling Threads.

 

 

 

Rahnis thumbed off the fuel supply to her flamethrower, and craned her neck to check on the other stray thread she'd spotted. _Send Ulleth for that one, dear, we need to keep moving_.

Alaireth rumbled her agreement, and with several fierce wingbeats had them back on course again in the centre of the threadfall corridor. They were flying a fast sweep along the path of the fall, moving against the grain of the pattern flown by the fighting Wings. Blue Sacquith blinked back into view a few moments later, followed by Puteth and Norvith. Further off, the paths flown by Betchath and Ulleth marked out the limits of the falling threads.

Rahnis glanced upwards to check their relative position. They were beneath Flamestrike and Windfire Wings now. Sensing her interest, Alaireth shared her mental contact with the other dragons.

_Hieth and Ormaith flame with pride. They do well, and very little is escaping their Wings. We will be in no danger beneath them. Pryanth senses my attention and seeks to hold it, but he'd be better keeping it on his own flame. I have told him as much. Tundreth has a minor score, but I assure him of how well he fights. Mishith is starting to struggle; she overstretched herself earlier. Hieth suspects and I confirm it for him. They will be sent back to the Weyr, and Terroth takes their place._

_They fight well._

_They do._

_Then let's skip ahead. Leave Puteth on station here to cover anything they miss, and ask the others to accompany us._

She was starting to sense a pattern to the weak spots in the fighting Wings' coverage. Thunderclap Wing, led by G'dil, were letting a lot of strays get past them generally. They and F'ass's Icestorm were the next paired set of Wings, followed by Cloudburst and Deluge at the trailing edge. Biarta had reported that there were very few problems reaching them back there, but Rahnis was certain of some heavy work to come before she reached them, and she wanted to deal with it as fast as possible. There was only so much time before the Wings changed flight-levels again at the leading edge, and she'd noticed that M'gan was bringing Skyfrost back into the pattern very high on the upper flight. In consequence, Snowfall were struggling with the sheer volume of threaded airspace on the far side of their own sweeps.

Alaireth took them _between_ , emerging in a deliberate sharp descent beneath Thunderclap Wing. Rahnis braced herself and her flamethrower, and twisted around as she searched the sky for Threads. _There! Warn Sacquith!_

_He flames!_

As expected, there were plenty of threads to be dealt with, scattered across the sky. She noted a few that were already too close to the cloud layer for her team to deal with, and let Alaireth pass them on to Ondarth. There was that much cloud between them that she'd have had no way of knowing where the other queen was at all, except for her rapport with Alaireth.

_What news from Biarta and Ondarth?_

_Nothing that can't wait. She senses we'll be hard pressed here. I ask Heggith and Luth to tighten their Wings, and Ormaith and Hieth to be ready to cover more air._ The dragon paused, and Rahnis could sense her nudging Norvith towards a scattered group. _We assist Norvith. That one is your first target, Rahnis. Ormaith says that he and the Weyrleader greatly appreciate the support, but to leave it at that. He reminds us our job is down here, not up there._

Rahnis sighed and switched her grip on her flamethrower again, deciding that the best way of attacking the loosely grouped threads would be to start from the 'wrong' side of them. The first thread would be more awkward, but Alaireth would need to bank that way to avoid Norvith's flames, and they'd be better placed for the others. _Did Ormaith say anything else?_

_No. Luth's and Heggith's Wings continue as they began. I do what I can to encourage them. Heggith's rider is scored; I think the pain distracts him. Thread falls densely where they are, and they do their best._

_Tell them they do well. We can handle their leavings, can't we?_

_Oh yes!_

Together, they did what they could, with Ondarth's assistance continuing beneath the clouds. Leaving three of the greens behind them, Alaireth called Puteth ahead again and moved on to the trailing edge. M'arsen and C'nir seemed to have that end of the fall well under control, and Alaireth spoke well of the conditions of the dragons they led. She lingered more on those from Deluge Wing, which was still newly returned to threadfighting. The injuries of the previous turn were well healed, and the dragons had all but forgotten their cause. P'vash and his dragon were eager to be confirmed as Wingleaders, but Rahnis agreed with Alaireth: the Wing was better served by M'arsen and Pellenth right now. P'vash would have his turn in time.

_Ondarth tells us she's heading back to the trailing edge as well now, and will return to Telgar after it passes her. Rith covers the air beneath Thunderclap, while Lanzith manages the burrows. There are groundcrews from Nabol assisting them. Biarta asks after Maenida._

What to tell her? _Say she has good days and bad days. She sleeps through the threadfalls, while Kiath comforts the injured. Fortunate that we've had so few of those today._ Indeed, they hadn't been needed for a single rescue so far, for which Rahnis was very grateful. _Thinking of injuries, Alaireth, how fares Snowfall?_

_Trath has kept me informed. No more bad scores since Harrath. They know I listen to them fight, and we will be back with them again soon._

_Let's go now. Call the others and get a visual from Trath and Baxuth. If we're quick, we can be in place before they switch levels._

Alaireth took them _between_ , returning to the morning air perfectly placed for her team to target the strays that the two bronzes had warned her of.

 _Here we are, and that thread is yours. I tell Baxuth not to start their next pass too high. He tells me he didn't want to risk his Wing with a fast ascent on the upper-flight. I remind him that_ someone _needs to flame those threads. Trath thanks us for our concern, and mocks Baxuth for being fearful. Baxuth accuses Trath of hogging our attention, but I watch them all._

Rahnis could sense that Alaireth was indeed doing just that, and that she seemed particularly concerned by something occurring in M'gan's Wing.

_What is Baxuth... surely he... GRALLATH!_

_What happened?_

Alaireth shared the sight of Grallath's scoring as seen by Klewth, a single long thread striking the length of the brown dragon's primary mainsail from fingerjoint to the inner trailing tip, before dragon and rider blinked _between_.

_They need us, Rahnis! Before they try to fly on it._

_Go! Take Klewth's visual and get us there as fast as you can._ She tugged her 'thrower away from the thread she'd been attacking and cut off its flames, and had it stowed beside her thigh a fraction of a second before Alaireth took them both _between_ again. For a large brown like Grallath, the catch would be awkward. _Do we need Janguath?_

_No time. Ormaith tells us to go back to the Weyr and wait, and get them to jump to us there. But we shan't. Klewth and Sixath flame the sky clear for us. I ask Linnebith to be ready to assist us on our return._

They emerged from _between_ into a cold blue sky spattered with drifting fragments of char, and the sound of a dragon bellowing in pain. Glad of the protection afforded by her flying helmet, Rahnis flattened herself against Alaireth's neck, head turned just far enough sideways to check how close they were to the brown.

Very close, as it turned out.

Even spilling air from her wings, the impact of the brown onto Alaireth's back was hard enough to raise bruises. The gold grunted, but bore it stoically, delaying her return to the Weyr only long enough to ensure Grallath's readiness. Linnebith was waiting for them in the air above the lake, ready to ease him down from Alaireth's spine once they were grounded. As the brown slithered down past the gold's tightly folded wings, Rahnis got her first view of the damage to his wing. What was left of the primary mainsail was held together by only the narrowest of margins; the slightest extra exertion would have ruptured the connective tissues beyond hope of repair. Launching herself skywards again as soon as Grallath was safely clear, Alaireth passed her rider's sight back to Baxuth and Ormaith. _Grallath has a good chance of flying again, thanks to us. I'm taking us back to the leading edge. Puteth and Ulleth await us, a dozen dragonlengths apart._

They returned to several uneventful minutes of scanning the sky overhead. While Rahnis watched for threads, Alaireth did what she could to encourage the other dragons. Snowfall weren't flying as easily as they might have done had they not lost a handful of dragons to Alaireth; the replacements were equally fit to fight, but were flying in less familiar positions beside their fellows. On the upper flight, Grallath's accident had greatly improved Skyfrost's focus, and the few threads that escaped the upper wings were easy pickings for the dragons on the queens' flight. Rahnis asked Alaireth to pass on her compliments to the two Wingleaders, only to have Trath inform her queen that they'd started getting crackdust again, and expected more of it to come as they crossed the mountains. Well, anything that made everyone's job easier was still something to be pleased about. Letting Sacquith linger behind them a while longer, Alaireth hurried her team further back down the path of the fall. Thunderclap held the upper level here, and while there were still stray threads aplenty to be flamed on the queens' flight, there were definitely fewer of them than there had been earlier.

 _Heggith greets me,_ Alaireth said, _and apologises for the mess. They are tiring faster than the other Wings, but the Threads fall thicker here. Many minor scores, and I ease the pain where I can. Our dragons are strong and fearless, I remind him, and the Weyrleader placed Heggith's Wing where it could do the most good._

 _Surely Sh'vek can't predict a fall_ that _well_.

The gold rumbled a laugh. _I'm not going to remind them of that!_ She directed Puteth to a slowly twisting tangle in the distance, and glided southwards to allow her rider to take on another singleton. _Ondarth tells me that we seem to have things well in hand,_ she said as she flew, _and that she will leave us now. She compliments me on our catching of Grallath. Her rider invites you to visit with her in Telgar. There will be Harpers performing a new ballad for the Weyrfolk at the end of the month._

_That sounds pleasant. How kind of her! Thank her again for her help, would you?_

_I have._

Alaireth's mind abruptly closed off.

_What? What did she say?_

A woman's voice cut through the air from somewhere over Rahnis' left shoulder. “She said you should take her advice and make sure of your mate when _you_ turn senior. But it'll be a warm day _between_ when _that_ happens.”

Only her concentration on her 'thrower's flame kept Rahnis from spinning around where she sat as Linnebith flew past them. _Delene! Is that really what she heard? And what in Faranth's name is she doing here, now?_

Alaireth answered her rider's questions in sequence. _Yes, only the first bit, and I've no idea._ She circled away from the other queen and out of shouting distance, making for the next nearest Thread within range. With each beat of her wings, the sense of annoyance in the gold dragon's mind grew stronger. _Linnebith demands – demands! – that we explain ourselves!_

 _What's to explain? We're not responsible for Biarta's misapprehensions._ She raised her flamethrower wand in readiness, and was all set to start flaming when a sudden rush of air buffetted Alaireth out of position. “ _Shard_ it!” Rahnis swore. There was only one other dragon large enough to have that kind of effect coming out from _between:_ Linnebith had blinked back into Alaireth's airspace. The other queen was still making demands and pushing mentally on Alaireth, Rahnis could feel it. She twisted back the other way and glared at Delene, then checked the sky for whoever else was close enough to chase the missed thread down. Betchath was closest, but busy flaming. P'retton was looking her way, curious over Linnebith's appearance, and she signalled the stray to him and Norvith. That done, she turned her attention back to the other weyrwoman.

“Can't it fardling _wait_?” she yelled.

“If _anyone_ should be doing Kiath's job, it's Linnie!”

“Kiath has a job, back at the Weyr. So do you. So do I.” She hefted her flamethrower in emphasis. “And I'm _trying_ to get on with it.”

_Delene tells me that Linnebith is needed here. She says I should respect her dragon's seniority, and stop pushing myself at the Wings. She can do her job while her dragon does hers. She reaches for Heggith, and Luth, and more, and tells everyone to look to Linnebith. She tries to pull me away from them! I shall not let her do that. Delene's mind is too heavy, she will distract them from the threads!_

_Let her do it, love. You know she won't be able to keep it up for long. Now's no time for bickering._

_This is_ not _right. Delene guides Linnebith, and she makes too great a demand on those they touch, even when they do not ask them to fly or flame differently. They move fast, dragon to dragon, claiming notice from as much of the Weyr as they can._

 _What does Ormaith say to that? Shells, he didn't like_ us _even suggesting how the fighting wings should fly, let alone ordering them directly. I just hope she settles down soon._ Rahnis guided her gold's attention towards a clump of stray threads falling too far from them to reach in straight flight, and asked her to take them both _between_. With luck, the two queens could both fight independently, as Alaireth and Ondarth had done earlier. Mere minutes passed before Rahnis conceded that she was wrong in that wish. On top of tugging at the minds of the fighting wings, Linnebith was apparently not content with having only Rith and Lanzith assigned to her guidance; any time Alaireth asked for Sacquith or one of the other greens to target a specific thread, Linnebith would try to countermand her. Uncertain of which queen to listen to, the smaller dragons would soon suffer from the confusion in their orders. Alaireth held firm, reluctant to relinquish her responsibility for Snowfall's dragons.

 _Trath also complains of Linnebith's interference; his rider wishes we could send them home quickly. Ormaith is aware of what they do, and tells me not to interfere if Linnebith wishes to prove her worth. His Wing is hard pressed, and his concern is with Kiath. Telemath calls on me and Linnebith both. We are needed for another rescue! I did not see the danger! She may do as she pleases; we and Janguath go to Cloudburst's aid, NOW._ Alaireth leapt _between_ , continuing her commentary. _Green Kaanaith's rider loses blood fast. I hold her mind, and warn Kiath of the need. Sh'jen will not be conscious long. Janguath catches Kaanaith; I will steady her if needed._

All the shared worries about Linnebith and Delene's behaviour were left behind. The fact that it was the assistant weyrlingmaster's brown rather than one of the Weyr's queens doing the catching said all that was needed about the urgency of treating Sh'jen's wounds. If a rider died while their dragon was being supported by another – or if the dragon panicked out of concern for their rider – all four lives could be lost. There was a good chance that Sh'jen's injuries would prove fatal; if so, Alaireth's mental contact with the green would give enough time and warning for Janguath to get clear. Speed and concentration were key.

 _Telemath argues with Ormaith about calling us directly, even though they're not on the upper flight right now,_ Alaireth continued. _He insists the sky will be clear for us. We are here now, and shall not stay long._

They emerged from _between_ for the briefest of instants, barely long enough for Rahnis to take a quick breath of air while she checked that Kaanaith was securely caught by Janguath and added both dragons to her visual of the Weyr, before Alaireth led them all _between_ once again. As soon as they were back at the Weyr, Kaanaith and Janguath separated, and the green glided steeply down towards the healers under her own power. Alaireth followed her down more slowly, keeping in close contact with her until Kiath could take on that burden. But where was she? Not beside the dragonhealers, nor on her ledge. Rahnis leaned out over the other side of Alaireth's neck. Not with the younger Weyrlings by the lake, either.

 _She's in her weyr,_ Alaireth said. _I don't like the feel of her mind. Get ready to jump, dear Rahnis!_

 _Can you reach Delene_? Rahnis asked as she unclipped herself from her safety straps.

 _No! And Linnebith will not listen. I alert the Wingleaders that there may be trouble. Delene was too far to support Kiath adequately, so Maenida woke to Kiath's need. Kiath struggles to reach her. Ormaith knows already, and I know his wishes. Kiath must not call on the dragons fighting thread, and Ormaith cannot abandon the fight, unless we fail him._ The queen's mind filled with a heavy, sad ache as she relinquished hold of Kaanaith's mind, in full knowledge that the green would likely be lost before the healers had done enough for her rider. _Kiath? KIATH?_

Alaireth skidded to a halt on the Weyr Queen's ledge, and Rahnis almost threw herself down to the ground in her haste. Her eyes refused to adjust to the darkness of the inner weyr as fast as she needed them to, but she could make out Kiath's bulk ahead of her. Alaireth followed her in, and with help from her dragon's eyes she finally spotted the Weyrwoman rocking backwards and forwards in a corner of the weyr, moaning softly, when she ought to have been drugged into senseless sleep in her bed!

_IS SHE THERE?_

Kiath's query echoed painfully in her head, sent to Rahnis direct as well as via Alaireth. She could sense Alaireth forcing her will on Kiath, insisting that Maenida lived and was there, right there before her. That she and her rider would help. That Kiath must not, _could not_ , draw on any other dragons but herself.

 _Help me, Rahnis,_ Alaireth begged, struggling to conceal her own doubts from the other, increasingly frantic queen. _I cannot reach the Weyrwoman's mind either!_

Trusting in her own dragon to keep her safe, Rahnis moved closer. “Maenida!”

The Weyrwoman raised her head. “I don' unners... don'....”

Shaking, Rahnis crouched down beside her, and instinctively pulled her close. “I know. It's alright.” Except, it wasn't. Alaireth was exerting every ounce of strength she had, drawing deeply on her rider's willpower as well as her own. But it wouldn't be enough, not nearly enough to quell Kiath's awful urge towards self-destruction, the one instinctive answer to loss and abandonment that all dragons possessed. The pressure and the pain and the terror were unbearable. They had moments left, no more than that, before Kiath would be forced to act, either to reach for the other dragons of the Weyr or to suicide _between_. Rahnis clung tighter to the Weyrwoman, feeling the shuddering of Maenida's breathing, the disoriented gasps and whimpers...

...and somehow, that _was_ enough. Tangible proof of life, Kiath latched onto the sensations fed to her from Rahnis, anchored herself to them, and desperately grappled for a safe hold on the Weyrwoman's mind. Alaireth's offered strength was stripped from her by the other queen, and then Rahnis felt her own mind being seized on. She was aware of a single fleeting moment of joyous triumph as the contact was finally secured, an echo of Kiath's need and delight in the woman she'd Impressed to.

 _Thank Faranth_ , she thought, as her own consciousness slipped away.

 

 

 

She'd been vaguely aware of the healers arriving. They hadn't even tried to coax Maenida away from Kiath's side; they'd simply set up a pallet on the queen's couch, and seen to it that the Weyrwoman was comfortable.

Someone had come over to her at one point – not Tarkan, one of the women who assisted him – and she'd roused herself enough to wave her away, then buried her face in her knees again, clinging to the tight kernel of Alaireth's mind. The less she moved, the less she thought, the easier it was to cope with the pounding ache inside her skull. For as long as there was a chance that Kiath might still need them, she and Alaireth would have to sit it out.

 _Thread has stopped falling_ , Alaireth eventually said. _Ormaith comes._

 _So soon?_ How strange. There'd been a good hour of threadfall still to come when they'd last left the fighting wings. Every miserable minute they'd spent waiting for their relief had _felt_ like an eternity... surely it couldn't be over already?

_Yes. Ormaith thanks us. Now we will rest. I have told a healer what you need. Open your eyes, Rahnis._

_Must I?_

_Yes, my dearest._

The same woman as before was crouched beside her. Tilga, that was her name.

“Your queen says your head pains are already lessening,” the woman said in a soft voice, “and the exhaustion will pass best if you can sleep. Faranth, I've never empathised with a patient's symptoms quite like _that_ before! We'd have brought you this sooner, but she said you needed to wait.” She held out a small ceramic cup.

 _Fellis? Alaireth, I can't take fellis now. What of you?_ Rahnis was conscious of the fact that Alaireth still bore two half-empty tanks of agenothree and an ill-secured flamethrower, as well as her fighting straps.

_You can. You will. And then you will sleep. I shall ask someone to help with all that._

The queen's mind became more insistent, and Rahnis was in no state to disagree. She wasn't sure which of them caused her to lift her hand to take the offered cup.

_There. Drink it._

So she did.

 

 

 

She woke back in her own bed, to the soft clicking sound of someone knitting at a speed that spoke of long experience.

_How do you feel, dear Rahnis?_

Alaireth's mind felt relaxed and at ease – much as she did herself. _Good, I think. You were well looked after while I slept? Who's here now?_

_Of course! I didn't care for a proper swim, so Lirroth's woman brought up buckets and cleaned and oiled me a little up here in our weyr. Some others came to help, and to sit with you. The old woman you like is there now. Before her, the healer woman I spoke to. Trath's rider was here too._

Rahnis opened her eyes and blinked away at the slight crusting of sleep. Quaiya was sitting at one end of her long couch, working on one of a pair of socks. The weyr was brightly lit by glows, so it was hard to tell if the faint light filtering past the curtains separating her quarters from Alaireth's couch was natural light, or that of yet more glowbaskets.

_How long did I sleep?_

_It's a few hours past sunset._

Not too long, but long enough that she needed to make use of the necessary. She rolled over onto her side and cautiously pushed herself upright. Her head swam a little, but at least it wasn't hurting any more.

“Rahnis? You do that slow, now!” Quaiya set her work down on the couch and hurried over. “You've had fellis, and it might not have worn off yet, even if you are awake again.”

“I think I'm all right,” Rahnis said, and gave the old woman a smile. “I _do_ need to get up though.”

Quaiya shook her head. “Tilga left a pan for that. You're not leaving your bedside until I'm sure you can get back into it again. Try to stand, first. If you can manage that, _then_ we'll see about getting you to your bathing room.”

Moving slowly enough to appease Quaiya, Rahnis noted a few changes to her weyr. The room had been tidied, and the clean laundry she'd left in a pile on the table had vanished. Quaiya muttered a few disapproving remarks about queenriders getting spoiled and denied having had anything to do with it, but there was a twinkle in her eye that suggested otherwise. In the bathing room, her leather cleaning kit was on a different shelf than where she'd left it, and on her way back out she realised that her fighting straps hadn't just been neatly hung on their pegs, but fully cleaned and oiled, too. St'larna _had_ been busy.

 _Trath's rider did those_ , Alaireth said in answer to her rider's query. _I think he wanted to talk to you again. Before he left, he asked if I could let Trath know when you woke up. Shall I tell him?_

_I'm not sure I feel up to another conversation like that right now. You can tell Trath I'm fine, but if F'ren asks if he can visit, tell him no._

Alaireth's mental tone was apologetic. _Ormaith also wanted to know if you woke. The Weyrleader is already on his way here._

“Is anything the matter?” Quaiya had gone back to her knitting while she'd been in the bathing room; now she set it aside again, wearing a look of concern.

“The Weyrleader'll be here soon.”

Quaiya rose stiffly from the couch. “Hmph. Anyone else, I'd turn them away. You sit yourself down, Rahnis. I'll go and show him in, and see myself out.”

Giving her bedfurs a wistful glance, Rahnis turned to her clothes chest and took out a heavy fringed shawl. She was already feeling the cold, and although her nightclothes were warm enough beneath a layer of furs, she didn't fancy receiving visitors from her bed. She still felt a little tired, but she thought she could put down the last lingering weakness to a lack of food rather than the fellis from earlier. Sitting down on the couch, she abruptly remembered that she hadn't yet asked Alaireth after Kiath and Maenida. _Are they well?_

_Kiath is... content, I suppose. But I do not know what today will mean for the Weyrwoman._

_Well. I suppose we'll find out soon enough for sure._

Footsteps sounded from the outer weyr. Rahnis looked round in time to see Sh'vek walking in alone, his shirt loose at the collar and a skin of wine in one hand. Unusually informal, for him.

“Weyrleader.” Rahnis made to stand up, but he gave her a small shake of his head.

“Sit. I know where you keep everything, remember?”

Of course, he'd spent enough time in her weyr the night she'd arrived, moving her furniture around while she'd unpacked. She watched him go to the dresser and fetch out a pair of glasses – the tinted ones M'ton had bought for her three Turns back, she noted with a pang. She hadn't used them since he'd died, partly out of fear of breaking one, and partly because they brought too many memories to mind. Sh'vek filled them both and set one down on the low table beside her, then moved back a couple of steps to lean against the wall. He'd not yet said a word to her of why he was there, so she decided to ask the first question instead.

“How is Maenida?”

He took a deep swallow from his glass before answering. “Alive.”

Rahnis waited a few moments, taking sips of her wine to give him time to continue, but Sh'vek didn't elaborate any further. Having heard Delene talk about other similar episodes before her arrival, Rahnis thought she could make a very good guess as to what that meant. Maenida would have been heavily dosed up with fellis again, enough to let her recover from the strain of the day. In a way, it was strange that Kiath should have an easier time dealing with the Weyrwoman's brain injury while she slept. Perhaps, whatever discontinuities there were in the Weyrwoman's mind, the less time she spent awake, the less the queen dragon was affected by them? They'd all have to wait until Maenida woke again to determine how much further her underlying condition had worsened, but even in the unlikely event that it hadn't, her recovery from fellis addiction would have been set back again by sevendays, if not months.

And what would that mean for the Weyrleader?

She looked up at him again, and realised that he was watching her closely in turn, twisting the stem of his glass between his fingers. It was enough to make her feel quite uncomfortable.

“I'm sorry we couldn't do more for her,” she said.

“You have nothing to apologise for. Alaireth has good instincts, and _she_ acted just as a queen dragon should.”

One handed, Rahnis pulled her shawl tighter. They were supposed to be talking about Maenida and Kiath, not her and Alaireth. “What will you do? About Maenida?”

Sh'vek pushed away from the wall and paced over to the table. “Master Rynder assures me she's in no immediate danger, that what happened today was a consequence of the original injury. She'll get stronger again, in time, but there's only so much she'll ever be able to re-learn and do for herself.” He took a deep swallow from his glass. “After today, I don't think I can afford to delay things any longer. C'nir's already starting to overstep the bounds of the authority _I_ gave him. I have to act decisively. Tomorrow morning, I'll be announcing her retirement.”

Rahnis was surprised to hear him being so frank with her about his decisions as Weyrleader, but really, Maenida's condition left him with very few alternatives. There was no question of what it would mean for the Weyr: Delene would become Weyrwoman when Linnebith rose to mate again in the spring. Rahnis didn't relish the prospect of being the woman's subordinate in fact as well as in name, or for having to make Alaireth submit to Linnebith's will. She couldn't understand why he hadn't acted to avoid events turning out this way; did Sh'vek still hold out hope that Delene could grow some common sense, that she and Linnebith would learn to do better than the monumental failure they had made of today? Or had all his hopes been vested in Maenida's recovery?

Whichever it was, she understood why he'd come to see her now. This visit was part warning, part plea: if Delene were to be Weyrwoman, she and Alaireth would have their work cut out for them, keeping the Weyr going in the background. If she was honest with herself she'd always suspected it would come to this eventually. She just hadn't expected to reach this point thinking even _less_ of Delene and her dragon than when she'd first arrived. “So. The Weyr will be Delene's, then. I guess I'd better try harder to get on with her.” Perhaps that was why he had been acting so oddly lately; was he intending on stepping aside too, relinquishing his hold on his power? “At least she'll relish the extra attention. Will you stay, after Linnebith rises?”

“I have every intention of remaining here.” His lips quirked as if he was trying not to smile, but he quickly masked it by taking another deep drink from his glass. “Delene as Weyrwoman.... It is the most obvious outcome, I agree, but not by any means the only one.”

 _What are the others?_ Rahnis mused to Alaireth. Begging _another_ new queen from a different Weyr? He could – should – have chosen someone other than herself in the first place, and he hadn't. Besides, he'd always been insistent that Delene would be Maenida's successor should the worst happen. No, he was obviously trying to tease the alternatives out of her, to see how well she'd be willing to stick to her place as junior weyrwoman. Well, she wasn't going to bite! She waited a little longer, then raised her brows questioningly.

“The timing is everything, you see,” he added.

As if she didn't fardling know that! She knew Alaireth's cycle far better than he did, but any idiot could count on their fingers well enough to see that Linnebith would rise first. Her annoyance grew: at him, and at the one fact that still, still didn't make any sense. “Then why in Faranth's name didn't you ask Vallenka for Serreni instead of picking the one queen at Ista with eggs on the sands?” If only he had, M'ton and Narnoth might have lived! “She might not be able to hear all the dragons like Delene can, but you can't tell me Delene would do better for this Weyr than Serreni would. Vallenka would have been more than happy to see her as Weyrwoman here. She looks on her as a daughter.”

Sh'vek shook his head. Leaving his empty glass on the table, he came and sat down beside her and leaned close enough to whisper in her ear. “She looks on her as a _niece_. _”_

Rahnis nearly spilled her wine in shock. “She's your daughter?” She'd never have guessed, but knowing it now, she could see how it all fit. And she could see something else, too. Even being her father, he _might_ have chosen Serreni for the High Reaches, and hadn't. The primary motivation of this man was to hold onto his own power, whether it benefited the Weyr or not. Serreni _would_ have been the best choice for the High Reaches, just not for Sh'vek himself. Rahnis found herself suddenly needing to reassess everything she thought she knew about him. The changes in his behaviour recently, and the way he'd acted on her suggestions. The sense of approval she was feeling from him. And the way he was looking at her _right now_. She swallowed uneasily.

“Biarta spoke well of you,” he said idly. “She made me an interesting offer. Can you guess what it was?”

Oh, she could. Gold Frith with a clutch on the way, in exchange for Linnebith and Delene? The High Reaches would need that clutch of eggs, so the transfer would necessarily be before Linnebith next rose. Which would mean.... She looked him in the eye, and he gave her an approving nod.

“Ah, yes. I see that you can.”

“Would Delene be so bad? I'm told she's far better company than I am, for a start.” The dry self-mockery came easily, a shield against the rising waters she'd suddenly found herself in. He laughed, and she realised a little late that humouring him in this way did not serve her in the slightest. “Delene at least would mean some stability for the Weyr, and a Weyrwoman they know and, ah....” She paused, pondering the right choice of words. Trust, respect? Hardly either of those. “...can _admire_.'' That was probably the most truthful word to use. “And there's always the fact that she can hear other dragons. I can't compete with that.”

Sh'vek raised an eyebrow. “No? I don't know where you've been finding the time...but you've done everything I asked of you, and more besides. You're right that there's no competition. Not between you and Delene, nor between Alaireth and Linnebith.”

Rahnis couldn't escape the feeling that he hadn't meant that last remark the same way she had.

“I'd say you've settled in well here,” he went on.

“Alaireth doesn't seem to mind the cold, at least”, she said, hoping to change the subject. Boring Sh'vek with her complaints about the weather ought to be far safer than letting him lead the conversation to wherever he was trying to take it.

“Aye, I heard tell you said the exact same thing to M'gan a few nights back. He offered his dragon to warm your ledge, C'nir told me.”

“I fail to see the relevance,” Rahnis lied. Sh'vek had clearly moved on to the _other_ competition now. She had a horrible suspicion that she knew where he was going with this. “M'ton and I were weyrmates; does everyone here expect me to forget him overnight?” She was very keen to remind _him_ of that fact too.

“M'gan's a handsome enough man... and they say persistence pays off.”

“If I wanted good looks in a lover, I'd find a Holder who was actually likely to keep them,” she drawled.

Sh'vek laughed again. “What _do_ you want?” he asked softly.

She stared at him. No, she definitely wasn't imagining the motive behind all this probing for potential rivals for Alaireth. For herself. Rahnis decided to put a stop to it. “What do I want? I want M'ton back.”

“And will you fill the rest of your life with his absence?”

Questions like that didn't deserve an answer. “Why are you here, Sh'vek?” Rahnis demanded.

“Forgive me,” he said. “There are times when I envy your freedom to grieve.” He looked away, hiding whatever truth she might have seen on his face. “Maenida's not coming back to me, Rahnis. Not the way she was. I can't...I have to do what's best for the Weyr.”

To witness a weyrmate's suffering, powerless to help them, tortured by slim and fading hopes...it was a heartbreaking thought. Rahnis reached across and squeezed his hand. “Of course you do.”

Sh'vek looked round at her again, his grey-blue eyes intense. “Is it too much to ask of you...that you do the same?”

Rahnis felt her mouth go dry; it surely wasn't her compassion that he wanted from her now. “You can _ask_.”

“Very well. It would be better for the Weyr for you to be senior Weyrwoman after Maenida's retirement,” Sh'vek said, holding her gaze. “But the Weyr also needs continuity, and a strong, united leadership. I'm not inclined to gamble on that score.”

Before that night, she'd have believed him easily: that he was acting in the Weyr's best interests first and foremost. Now, she wasn't so sure. She shared her worry with Alaireth before answering. “When a queen rises... there are never any guarantees. Please don't expect me to believe differently.”

“True, yes... but certain facts can tip the balance, one way or another. A talented dragon. The support of the Weyr. Or...” He raised a hand, and ran a finger lightly down the side of her face. The slight smile was back on his lips again, but it was his eyes that she couldn't pull her gaze away from. “...the rider's choice. This Weyr could be yours, Rahnis. I can take action to _ensure_ that it will be, if I so choose, but I need to be certain of your answer tonight. A partnership between us, mutually beneficial. Starting now.”

Rahnis turned her face away to look towards the outer weyr, and Alaireth. _Shells, Alaireth! He's serious about this._

The queen's response was surprisingly pragmatic. _He does not wish to wait for Linnebith to rise. He seeks to fly you, now. Ormaith says I should encourage you, for the good of this Weyr. I am not sure if Kiath would approve, but Kiath is asleep._

 _What do_ you _say?_

 _He has treated you better than Vallenka. His compliments are genuine, and the Weyr_ does _need us. Better him by your side, than Delene and whoever Linnebith chooses._

Well, that was almost certainly true. In some ways it would be a relief. He wasn't asking for her heart, nor was he offering his own to her. She'd be protected from any expectations of abandoning M'ton's memory, and Sh'vek at least understood how and why he'd died, knew her weyrmate's true worth. All he wanted was her continued loyalty, and for the both of them to do their best for his Weyr. Their Weyr. She certainly couldn't argue that Delene becoming Weyrwoman _wouldn't_ be disastrous for the Weyr. Would that be enough? Sh'vek wasn't unattractive, in spite of his age, but more appealing by far was the fact that he respected her enough to _want_ her as his Weyrwoman. In that position, she might even be able to put a stop to his feud with F'ren. It wasn't entirely necessary, what the Weyrleader seemed to be proposing...but she could understand why he might think it was.

Deliberately, she drained her own wineglass and rose to set it beside its partner on the table. Sh'vek stood too, but didn't follow. He was waiting, giving her space to find her own answer, to make her own choice.

She took a deep breath and looked him in the eyes. “What exactly are you suggesting?”

The question was all the invitation he required – they both already knew the answer to it. Sh'vek crossed the room and pulled her into his arms. He kissed her, throat first, then brought his mouth up to her lips. She could feel the physical strength of him, of a dragonrider still in his prime, but it paled against the force of his will. She closed her eyes and kissed him back, let him gather her up and carry her to her bed, relying on the sheer physicality of what they were doing to one other fill the gaps left vacant by absent love. She still wasn't absolutely certain about letting it happen, but was attempting to think of it just like a flight, an act which meant nothing more than what it was... and yet, one with consequences that inevitably rippled out everywhere. She couldn't say she'd desired any man's touch since M'ton had died, but all that really meant was that there was nothing to get in the way.

He touched her, tugging her clothing aside, murmuring her name in satisfaction; both dragons were listening well enough for him to sense what worked best, how he might please her. She could already tell that he would. There was nothing tentative or deferential in the way he moved, nothing hesitant at all, and her responsiveness only excited him further. Touch followed touch: intense, intimate and escalating fast. She wondered if he realised how illusory it all was. Whatever power she allowed him to exert, there and now, it was nothing to the hold she now had on _him_.

And then the balance shifted. Heart racing, she gasped at the sudden surge of sensation, familiar and different all at once. She could sense a very masculine delight emanating from him to Ormaith to Alaireth to her, much as her own pleasure must have echoed back to him in turn. _This is just the start_ , one or more of them thought. She was starting to understand how much he intended to achieve that night, and what he expected her memories of it to mean. _Sweet Faranth!_ she thought as he kissed her again, and now, _now_ she found the desire and need inside her truly rising. In the back of her mind, Alaireth was listening, but not to her.

 _What is it?_ she asked, unaccountably annoyed by the distraction.

_Linnebith and Delene speak to me. They tell me that Sh'vek made you lose the child. Oh, my dearest, it is true! Linnebith does not lie. Nor does Ormaith deny it; he cannot hide the truth from me._

Cold horror spiked through her, and she tried to push Sh'vek away, voicing her denial, appalled that he could have done such a thing, and in no doubt at all that he had.

He lifted himself a little way away from her, swearing furiously and cursing Delene, but he hadn't yet let her go. “I did what I thought best for the Weyr,” he said. “Perhaps it was a mistake, in hindsight, but you'd most likely have lost it anyway.”

That wasn't an apology, or even an excuse! A _mistake_? Rahnis was certain that he could see the utter loathing in her eyes, could hear it in her voice as she said, “A mistake. Well, we all make them.”

Her meaning was clear, but so was his. “So we do. Be very certain, Rahnis, that _you_ don't make one now.”

She could scarcely believe his nerve. Did he expect her to _ignore_ what he'd done? It wasn't something that she could _ever_ forgive him for. She ought to feel vulnerable lying here like this. Any other woman would, but not a weyrwoman, not Alaireth's chosen. Why should she fear his anger, his greater physical strength, or his lingering desire? Each and every one of those was a pittance compared with those of her queen, and Alaireth was utterly of one mind with her rider, furious beyond belief at what Sh'vek had done to her. Rahnis could sense that there were other dragons trying to talk to Alaireth, and that the queen was pushing them all away. Sh'vek was still holding her, controlling himself and his temper, wise enough not to push her too hard.

“Think, woman. Understand what this means,” he said, his tone measured and calm.

Rahnis stared coldly back at him. A line had been crossed, and both of them knew it. What it would mean? It would mean accepting his right to make her decisions for her, a concession he'd surely use to cement his hold on her ruthlessly. Not something she'd willingly give up to _any_ man, not even M'ton. But if she rejected him now, made it clear that Alaireth would _never_ permit Ormaith to fly her...she'd never be Weyrwoman if she did that, and the whole Weyr would pay the consequences. That needling sense of duty was the only thing that held her back. What matter the deep cost to her own spirit, against the benefit to the Weyr?

Alaireth could sense her indecision, as slight as it was. The queen's mind was firm with resolve; she knew Rahnis better than anyone else alive, knew exactly what to say to help her rider make the choice that was right for _her._

 _Trath dares tell me that you must not stop, that you_ need _to be Weyrwoman!_ she said with indignation. _But you do_ not!

No more than Sh'vek _needed_ to be Weyrleader, Rahnis realised.

She shook her head. It was his choice, whether he chose the next Weyrwoman for the Weyr's benefit or his own, and she wasn't going to bear any misplaced guilt for it, whatever he did. She'd live with the consequences of her _own_ choices, starting with this one. Still pinned beneath him, Rahnis looked the Weyrleader in the eyes.

“Get out. Now.”

 

 


	18. Chapter 18

_My weyrmate flew over the ocean_   
_My weyrmate flew over the sea_   
_My weyrmate flew over the ocean_   
_Oh bring back my weyrmate to me_   
_Bring back, bring back, bring back my weyrmate between, to me_   
_Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my weyrmate to me._

_Last night as I lay on my pillow_   
_Last night as I lay on my bed_   
_Last night as I lay on my pillow_   
_I dreamt that my weyrmate was dead_   
_Bring back, bring back, bring back my weyrmate between, to me_   
_Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my weyrmate to me._

_So fly the Wings o'er the ocean_   
_And fly the Wings o'er the sea_   
_Oh fly the Wings o'er the ocean_   
_And bring back my weyrmate to me_   
_Bring back, bring back, bring back my weyrmate between, to me_   
_Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my weyrmate to me._

_The Wings have flown over the ocean_   
_The Wings have flown over the sea_   
_The Wings have flown over the ocean_   
_And brought back my weyrmate to me_   
_Bring back, bring back, bring back my weyrmate between, to me_   
_Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my weyrmate to me._

(trad. melody)

 

**Evening, 8.1.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

Trying to ignore the throbbing pain in his arm, F'ren held the remaining fingers of his left hand up in front of his eyes and flexed them as far as he could bear. They were stiffening up fast now, and although he only had a couple of pieces of his fighting straps left to dry and oil, he wasn't certain that enough dexterity remained in the hand to finish what he'd started. The healers had told him that chores like this were supposed to _help_ , shard it. Before he'd got scored, he'd have had his straps cleaned and oiled in a fraction of the time he'd already spent on them. His tediously slow pace hadn't been a problem when he'd been working on Alaireth's straps for Rahnis, hoping that he'd still be there when she came round from the fellis, but Trath's had also required attention, and he'd only got the job partway done when his hand had started cramping up. He wasn't in the habit of leaving soaped-up leathers to dry and crack, and so the last hour had been an utter misery.

The worst part of the missing finger and thumb wasn't so much the need to find new ways of doing practically everything, but rather _forgetting_ all those things that had become second nature over the turns. A simple twist of his wrist, flicking the leather to check the strap's suppleness while he worked his way along it, had resulted in the whole thing slithering off his lap to the floor. All his instinctive grab for it had achieved was to send a sharp ache the full length of his arm. F'ren glared from fingers to arm and back again. What was it Tarkan had told him? _Tendons restricted to half their normal range, wrist rotation the same, elbow joint almost unaffected, but the musculature of the forearm could only be strengthened, not re-grown._ Well, his elbow wasn't _almost unaffected_ now, and a half-clenched half-fist was about as useful as a green weyrling on the upper flight. He twisted his arm in experiment, checking on the scar tissue that was the only thing that bulked out the deep groove of the threadscore running down the outside of his arm. The movement added a whole new layer of hurt; he'd almost certainly have to listen to Tarkan berating him for overdoing things tomorrow.

 _I can do that now, if you want,_ Trath suggested. _You weren't thinking about what you were doing at all. Cracked leathers won't kill you half as fast as a slip in concentration will._

F'ren smiled towards his dragon. _I'm not going to get myself killed up here._

_Some bad habits are worse than others, and harder to break._

_I know, I know. My mind_ has _been elsewhere, hasn't it?_

Trath sent back a burst of reassurance. _Today gave everyone much to think about._

For months now, Maenida had lingered on her sickbed. The few improvements in her health had been slow in coming, and her continued recovery anything but certain, regardless of what Sh'vek had told the Weyr in the past. Trath's suggestion all those months ago, that the Weyrleader was simply waiting for the right time to announce her retirement, had seemed more and more likely with every passing sevenday. It wouldn't be a decision any Weyrleader would willingly rush into; knowing Sh'vek, he'd leave it as close to Linnebith's next flight as he dared – if not later. _That_ had been the timing F'ren had thought he was working with. By the time Linnebith was next ready to mate, he'd hoped to have the whole Weyr convinced that Rahnis would be a better choice for Senior Weyrwoman than Delene, an impression that the two women were achieving well enough all by themselves. For the rest, he'd barely needed to interfere at all. G'dil was as fiercely defensive of his weyrmate's status as Acting Weyrwoman as he was of his relationship with her, and hadn't needed much encouragement to push Delene into taking on tasks that were clearly beyond her. Raising C'nir's profile as a prospective Weyrleader and eroding his loyalties to Sh'vek had been the harder job. F'ren had publicly sought the man's opinion and backed him against Sh'vek on the rare occasions when that was possible, and slowly, slowly the small frictions between the two men were growing. Everything had been going so well. _Too_ well, perhaps.

It had all come to a head that morning. There'd been no hiding the fact that Maenida had had another dangerous relapse, nor how close the Weyr had come to a repeat of the events of the last autumn. Delene and Linnebith's collective incompetence had also become as plain to see as dragons in the sky to the majority of the Weyr's Wingleaders – G'dil being the obvious exception. Sh'vek had forbidden any discussion of the matter during his post-fall debriefing, in spite of the absence of all three weyrwomen. He'd barely kept the Wingleaders in the council chamber long enough to grumble, cutting things short right after giving G'dil and C'nir their reprimands, and dismissing them all back to their duties. Down in the Lower Caverns, the entire Weyr had been engaged in a frenzy of speculation. How close _had_ Maenida come to dying, or losing Kiath, or helplessly causing another disaster? Had Delene caused the problem by her absence from the Weyr? Or had Alaireth been too inexperienced to support her? Had the dispute between the queens caused the problem? Sh'vek might be playing his cards close to his chest, but the man wasn't stupid, and everyone agreed that one fact was certain. Maenida couldn't _possibly_ remain as Senior Weyrwoman for much longer, not any more.

F'ren _had_ considered this possibility, that Maenida's condition would worsen. It wouldn't be ideal, but nor would it be a complete disaster for his plans, so long as Delene was transferred to another Weyr before her queen rose to mate. He didn't think the Weyrleader would rush that choice either – better for Sh'vek if the rest of the Weyr, the bronzeriders especially, had false expectations of who the next senior queen would be. But regardless of whether Sh'vek made his announcement tomorrow or in another three months, it was past time to make sure that Rahnis was well aware of what was coming. Just as soon as the fardling woman woke up!

Sighing, F'ren stretched down with his good arm to collect the fallen leather strap from the floor. His dragon was right: worrying over things would only slow things down, and the sooner he finished, the sooner he could get some numbweed and deal with all those aches. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he set to work again with renewed resolve.

Half an hour later, as F'ren was rebuckling the last piece of leather back into place, Trath gave him the news he'd been waiting for. _F'ren? Alaireth tells me that her rider is awake._

The straps fell to the floor, forgotten, as F'ren sprang to his feet. _Tell her we're on our way. She knows I need to talk to her?_

Trath's mind pushed gently back at him, stilling his haste. _There's more. She doesn't want to see you tonight._

_Tough. I'm going down._

_I don't think you should. The Weyrleader is on Alaireth's ledge._

“Sh'vek's going to speak to her? Now?” F'ren swore to himself. He _really_ should have seen the Weyrleader's haste coming. Sh'vek hated losing control. If outside events had forced his hand, he'd seize control of everything that still _was_ within his grasp: the timing of his announcement, and the choice of Maenida's successor. He'd want to be certain that he was choosing the right weyrwoman, that she'd be loyal to _him_ , and he'd want to do it _fast_. _Has he gone in yet?_

_Yes. And the woman who was with Rahnis has left._

F'ren sank back down onto his stool and laughed softly. _This is what I wanted_ , he thought, more to himself than to his dragon. _Not the way I expected things to go, but it still achieves everything I wanted._

_You don't sound convinced._

Trath was right; he wasn't. _It's just... I don't know. We were supposed to have more time!_

The dragon's reply was pragmatic. _I don't think we need it. The Weyrleader will choose the way we want him to._

I _needed more time, then._ If only M'ton hadn't died.... Getting between Rahnis and her weyrmate _before_ Alaireth rose wouldn't have been feasible, but he could at least have laid the foundations, made himself the most attractive alternative the High Reaches had to offer her. That had been his plan, until the idiot Istan lost himself _between_. Winning the heart of a grieving woman was well nigh impossible. How could he even try to take the place of a dead man?

He dried off the last lengths of Trath's straps, then set them aside for oiling first thing in the morning. It would be better to do them that night, but he knew he wouldn't be able to give them his full attention. Realising that he was growing more and more uneasy with every passing minute, F'ren stood up and walked out of the weyr to join his dragon on the ledge. The wind hit him with icy force, and he hunkered down behind one of Trath's forelegs to shelter himself from the worst of it. Sh'vek was down there with her now, no doubt applying every ounce of his charisma to winning her over. It was a surprisingly repulsive thought, for all that he'd have done the same thing himself, if he'd been the one in Sh'vek's position.

 _What's_ happening? he asked his bronze. _My eyes can't see a damn thing down there._

_You think mine can do any better through solid rock? Alaireth and Ormaith are talking but they keep their conversation to each other. There's nothing you can do. Go back inside, and get some numbweed on that arm._

Reluctantly, F'ren turned back to his weyr. Halfway past Trath's couch an idea occurred to him that he thought _might_ just work in his favour. _Ask Delene what Ormaith and Alaireth speak of. Tell her Sh'vek is offering Maenida's role to Rahnis._

_F'ren!_

_What? It's perfect! There's no question that she'll interfere. If Sh'vek's... well, he's been in there more than long enough to make her an offer. About time for an interruption, I think. If Delene does it, that'll be all he needs to make his mind up in favour of Rahnis._

The dragon rumbled a laugh. _Oh, I know all that. You're sure of this?_

_Damn sure._

_There. Now, we wait._

The reaction wasn't long in coming. F'ren hadn't even reached the inner weyr when Trath alerted him to the bellow of an anguished dragon, loud enough to be heard above the howling wind.

“Ah, shells! That _can't_ be good!” _Tell me it wasn't Alaireth!_

 _It was._ In a swift wordless expression, Trath shared his knowledge of what Delene had told Alaireth.

 _Oh no. Oh, no, no, no, No! Shard it, this will ruin everything! She can't throw it all away_ now! F'ren pushed his will insistently at his dragon's mind. _She_ needs _to be Weyrwoman! Don't let her squander it, Trath, tell Alaireth, tell her everything, anything, just make sure Rahnis does whatever she has to..._

He was still in close rapport with Trath when Alaireth's response came. The strength of the queen's rage was enough to make him physically recoil, and it roused a similar fury in his own mind. His flawless plans in tatters, he waited to see what would happen next. A few minutes later Trath shared his sight of Sh'vek leaving Alaireth's weyr.

_Alaireth says Rahnis asks what the... you thought you were doing._

“Ha! She did, did she?” The weyrwoman's language must have been pretty colourful for Trath to edit it like that. _I'm sure I could ask the same thing of her. No. Take me down, Trath. This needs to be face to face._

He hastily retrieved a single loop of his flying straps from his weyr and, once back on the ledge, slung the leather upwards and over the top of Trath's neck. Mounting his dragon was still awkward, but he'd never have managed at all without the harness, not with his arm aching the way it was tonight. Trath leapt away from their weyr, wings beating strongly at first to carry them safely through the worst of the wind, then stilling into a silent glide through the darkness that carried them unerringly to Alaireth's ledge.

Using his dragon's eyesight for guidance, F'ren entered the weyr. Alaireth lay wakeful on her couch, the queen's eyes whirling a mixture of orange and greenish-yellow. You couldn't narrow down a weyrwoman's mood precisely from her dragon's eyes alone, but he was pretty certain that neither Alaireth nor her rider were particularly happy. Well, neither was he!

Trath departed for the Weyr's rim as soon as F'ren reached the weyrwoman's quarters. In the inner weyr, F'ren found Rahnis sitting on the end of her bed. She'd switched the bedgown she'd been dressed in earlier for warm winter trousers, shirt and vest, but her feet were still bare, one of them jiggling in agitation atop the opposite knee. The hair around the side of her face was damp, he noticed. “Weyrwoman.” He didn't want to ask what had happened between her and the Weyrleader; just looking at her face was enough to tell him that it hadn't ended well. Beyond any doubt, whatever chance there'd ever been that Sh'vek would allow her to become Weyrwoman was lost for good. To have come so close...!

Rahnis stood up and paced towards him, and folded her arms across her chest. “F'ren. As much as I appreciate your concern, I think you have some explaining to do.” Her voice was colder than _between_ itself.

 _He_ had some explaining to do? After what she'd just done? The frustration of his plan's failure was simply too much. “Faranth's _flatulent_ tail-fork! Did that dunk in the lake at Turnover addle _all_ your wits? He offered you the Weyr, and you threw it back in his face, didn't you?”

She continued silently staring right through him, barely seeming to react to what he'd said at all. What had she been _thinking_? “All you had to do was keep his respect until after Linnebith rose, and the Weyr would have been...”

“Yours?”

 _Now_ she met his gaze, demanding an answer from him with every fibre of her being. F'ren sighed in exasperation; she'd missed the point entirely, and there was really nothing good he could say to answer her anyway.

“That's what you want, isn't it?” She laughed bitterly. “Keep Sh'vek's respect? At least I know I'd _earned_ it. You, though. _You_ just think I'm an easier route to a Weyrleader's knots than Delene would be.”

“Can a man not have more than one motive in your world?” he snapped back. _Shells, Trath, the woman's infuriating!_

Not _now, F'ren._

“In your case? I very much doubt it!”

 _Trath?_ F'ren mentally felt for the bronze, and finally sensed the pressure that Alaireth had been applying to Trath ever since he'd arrived, demanding that the bronze answer her questions. It was a rare dragon who could disobey even a junior queen; F'ren closed his eyes and added his own willpower to Trath's, realising his mistake an instant too late. He'd _wanted_ to be honest with them both, _wanted_ Rahnis as Weyrwoman, with all the authority that entailed. The tight, solid knot of his dragon's mind unravelled, and Trath told Alaireth everything she wanted to know.

“All this time,” Rahnis hissed. “You scheming, dishonest, manipulative, _tunnelsnake_ of a man! You're damn right you should've been honest with me sooner.”

F'ren grimaced. Alaireth had focused on the most unsavoury details of what he'd done, naturally! “I was trying to make things _better_ here!”

“Oh, I can see that. Better for yourself.” Rahnis' voice was thick with disgust. “ _You_ never cared a jot about what M'ton was like...and I'm starting to doubt that you were all that concerned about your Wing.”

Not concerned about his Wing? He wasn't going to stand for that. “I've done _everything_ I can for my Wing!”

“Except resign your knots. You're just as bad as Sh'vek!” She turned away, and paced over to a nearby table. Leaning on it for support, she spoke quietly. “You should apologise to your dragon. I should never have needed to ask Alaireth to do that.”

F'ren growled, and closed his eyes. She had no right to judge him, or blame him like that! As bad as Sh'vek? How dare she! How dare she be _right,_ damn her! He stretched his mind towards Trath's in contrition, letting all of his anger and frustration ebb away. _She's right. Oh, Trath, I'm sorry. What have I done?_

 _We did what we thought best_. Trath's mental voice seemed closer than usual, and almost sounded relieved. _Now, we move on._

_How?_

_Look at her, F'ren. What do you see?_

F'ren opened his eyes again and tried to catch the weyrwoman's gaze, but she was staring pointedly away from him. “I'm sorry. Truly. I never meant...” He let the rest of the sentence die in his mouth. Lying to her wouldn't help his cause now. He hadn't intended to hurt her – not this time – but everything else he'd done, everything else that had happened.... Oh, he'd meant it, all right. And then there was all that Sh'vek had done, had tried to do. _She's hurting a lot, isn't she Trath?_

 _Of course she is!_ _But you knew that already._ The dragon's mind became firmly insistent. _The question is...does that_ matter _to you, F'ren?_

Did it?

He'd been trying to manipulate her at least as much as Sh'vek had, if not more. He could hardly blame her for being so disgusted with him, and the more he thought about it, the more he agreed with her. It was true enough that at first she'd been little more than a means to an ends for him: a way for him to win the leadership of the Weyr, to make things better for the High Reaches. He still believed that the Weyr deserved better than Sh'vek – or Delene and _anyone_ – but over the last month his priorities _had_ changed.

What _did_ matter? What did he _really_ want? To fight Thread with Trath as fiercely as any dragonpair could. To lead his Wing in that endeavour, protecting them and Pern to the best of his ability. Trath mentally echoed F'ren's pride, and encouraged him on. To see Alaireth as senior queen, and Rahnis as Weyrwoman. To lead the Weyr beside them?

Perhaps. But not by manipulating her into choosing him as her Weyrleader, not any more. By _earning_ it, just as she had earned it. The respect he truly desired wouldn't come from wearing a Weyrleader's knots, it would come from inside himself, from his wingmates, and one day, he hoped, from Rahnis herself.

It was time to be honest with himself. _Yes, Trath, she matters to me._ “I _am_ sorry,” he repeated, rather uselessly – the weyrwoman showed no signs of being easily convinced.

Rahnis sighed, and dismissed his apology with a small shake of her head. “He'll be making an announcement in the morning. If you're quick, you can speak to Delene before he does. She'll be Weyrwoman now, thanks to you. Make it clear that she owes you, and I'm sure she'll be _properly grateful_.”

Hope flared in F'ren's heart – not at the prospect of becoming Weyrleader to Delene, but at the simple fact that in spite of everything, Rahnis obviously despised him _less_ than Sh'vek.

“I should thank you, too,” she added, turning to face him again. “For opening my eyes.”

And his had been opened, too.

_Well then. You'd better tell her. Quickly._

“Well? Don't you think you should leave? Seize your dreams, bronzerider?”

F'ren firmed his resolve. “Rahnis. I don't want the Weyr for myself. I want it for _you_.”

“What?”

Before F'ren could explain, Trath joined the discussion, his mind coloured by amused exasperation. _Alaireth, my rider is an idiot. He's trying to say that he cares about her-_

_Oh, I am, am I?_

Trath ignored his rider's attempted interruption. _-even if he doesn't realise that's what he's doing, or how badly he's doing it. As I was saying, he's an idiot._

F'ren wasn't privy to Alaireth's reply, but Rahnis' face visibly hardened as he watched.

“Well I _don't_ want it, or you,” she snapped. “Do you know what I _really_ want, F'ren?”

“Sh'vek's balls on a platter?” he muttered. Or maybe his own....

“I just want to get out of here!” she said in a despairing tone. “I _dream_ of it, just Alaireth and myself, out on our own in this dreadful lonely valley, with nothing but a flock of disgruntled wherries for company. I can't stand it, F'ren! I can't even dream of my own home any more, haven't done for _months_. And Alaireth and I are going to be stuck here for good now, with Sh'vek and Delene, and I _really_ can't imagine many things worse than that!”

Something about what she'd said struck a chord, told him that this chance remark of hers was very, very important, and he sucked in his breath through his teeth. _A dreadful lonely valley, with nothing but a flock of disgruntled wherries...._ It couldn't be the same place, surely! Thinking hard, he pulled the details out of his memory. “It curves as you fly up it,” he said softly, “from east-west to close to north-south. The wherries nest on the north-eastern face – better protection from Thread – but the whole valley is riddled with tumbles of stone, potholes and overhangs. Lousy grazing, but the shelter and the thermal springs were good enough reasons for someone to try to carve out a holding there, once.”

Rahnis paled. “What? But that's... it's _real_?”

He nodded. _Show her please, Trath._

Her eyes grew distant, then closed. “I don't believe it. It's... it's not exactly as I know it, but it's definitely the same place.”

“What's different?”

She gave him a wry grimace. “Your version has less snow.”

Trath shared an image, passed on to him from Alaireth. The angle was unfamiliar, but judging by the shadows he was looking down the valley from somewhere on the high ground to the northwest. Rahnis was quite correct that her version of the valley had had a lot more snow; a large drift obscured the spot where he'd expected to see the old hold door.

“It _is_ the same,” he said.

Rahnis shook her head, and leaned back against the table. “This is all too confusing. Where is it? I've never seen anywhere like it on the sweeps I flew with Sh'vek and R'fint.”

“You wouldn't have. It's well off the usual sweeps, and if anyone else knows of it, Trath's a wherry-hen. The real question is, how do _you_ know it? How can you dream of a place you've never seen, never visited? So perfectly? You've seen my memory of it now, but....” He trailed off. Rahnis was looking at him strangely, her fists clenched hard on the edge of the table. “What?”

“I've been there, F'ren, inside and out. All this time, I've _been_ there. Vallenka said we'd die if we tried to save them...but there's nothing else that fits!”

What in Faranth's name was she going on about? “Save who?”

“M'ton and Narnoth. I've gone back in time to save them!”

It had to be the fellis, or exhaustion, or some other lingering after-effect of the burden Kiath had placed on her mind that day – an insane weyrwoman was just _unthinkable_. He moved swiftly towards her, and took hold of her by the shoulders. “Rahnis, they're _dead_. It happens. You can't do the impossible, no matter how much you want it.”

“Then _why_ have I even tried? That's what I've done, I'm certain of it. Am going to do. Depends on your perspective, I suppose. I've taken Alaireth _back_ , months back....”

Her eyes looked clear and alert; excited, even. Seriously worried for the woman's sanity, he called on his dragon. _Trath?_

 _Alaireth says to listen. Her rider_ will _explain._

“Sorry,” she said in a small voice. “Of _course_ you don't understand. I felt much the same way when M'ton explained it all to me. The day he and Narnoth died.”

F'ren realised then that he'd misjudged her expression – it wasn't excitement on her face, it was fear. Beneath his hands, she was shaking. “I'm listening.”

She sighed. “Faranth, this isn't easy. Best if I just tell you straight. Time, F'ren. Dragons can travel to a well-visualised _when_ just the same way they do to a _where._ ”

She truly sounded like she believed her own words, and he swallowed back the rebuttal that he'd been on the verge of saying. “Go on.”

“M'ton did it, took Narnoth through time. There are records on it, back at Ista – in all the Weyrs, I think – restricted to the Weyrleaders alone. M'ton told me Vallenka showed them to him, but I can't believe he saw them all. That day, that threadfall...he and Narnoth lived it four times over. That's what killed them.”

Travelling from one time to _another_? Living the same hours over and over? Four times over? _Is that_ true _, Trath? Could you do that?_

_I don't see why I'd ever need to. What could I need in another time that I don't have right now?_

_But_ could _you?_

_Alaireth says it's possible, but neither she or her rider like the idea._

_Understandable, if their weyrmates died doing it._ He looked her steadily in the eyes. “Dragons can travel _between_ times.”

She nodded. “Alaireth says that you and Trath believe us. Thank you. I know how incredible it sounds.”

“And dangerous.” F'ren let go of her with a sigh, considering the likely mechanics of such a jump. Going from place to place was one thing, but how might one sidestep the flow of time itself? How could you visualise a specific time, unless you'd already been there? Could you _be_ in the same place twice? Or would you just come back into your other-time selves? And like Trath had said, why would you even want to? And how come he'd never heard of it before? “You think you've _done_ this, too? To save their lives? How?”

“ _I don't know!_ I know I can take Alaireth back to before they died, but even then it may not be possible to save them. Vallenka said it would kill us to try it.” She gave him a slightly sick smile. “There's more. I've been having these dreams for months, F'ren. Alaireth and I have _both_ been living twice for months. Do you see what that means?”

Trath was fastest to the answer. _Alaireth will rise before Linnebith does!_

F'ren whistled softly. “Well. And you said you didn't want the Weyr!”

“I don't, not as a goal in itself. I'd never risk taking Alaireth _between_ times for the sake of my own ambition – and _certainly_ not for yours! But after today, tonight...given the chance...yes, I'd far rather take the reins myself than hand them to Delene and Sh'vek. I want to make him _pay,_ F'ren, pay for what he's done to this Weyr and his part in M'ton's death. For that, and for what he did to me. But not – never! – at _any_ price.”

“You need to see those records, don't you?”

She nodded again. “Tonight. I'm not fool enough to make Alaireth jump blind, just on the possibility that it _might_ work, but I don't think I can afford to wait too long, either.”

 _As bad as sending a untrained, smokeless Weyrling into Threadfall,_ F'ren thought at Trath.

 _As bad as going_ between _places without knowing what to do,_ the dragon replied. _We lost friends that way once, didn't we?_

 _Oh, Trath. Yes, we did._ F'ren pulled his mind hastily back from memories he didn't want to relive. “The records, then. Ista's, or do you know of some here?”

“Here. There's a locked cabinet in the records room, for anything too private or sensitive for a Weyrwoman to share with her juniors.”

“A locked cabinet. In the records room.” He supposed there were worse places they could be kept – like underneath Sh'vek and Maenida's fardling bed – but not by much. “I suppose you want us to sneak in via the passage from the Hatching Sands?” he asked dryly.

“No, I thought it'd be more _subtle_ to go right past Ormaith and Kiath.”

“You think you can break into a locked cabinet with _subtlety_?” He shook his head, somehow certain that they were looking at the problem in completely the wrong way.

“I _do_ have an idea or two there. I'm more worried about finding what we need quickly enough. We'll only have so much time...”

The solution came to him in an instant. He stepped back and quickly turned on the spot, inspecting her weyr. _Only so much_ time? _Trath, I_ am _an idiot_.

_I'll remind you of that, if I remember._

“...and however many relevant hides there are in there, they won't be th- Where are you going, F'ren?”

From halfway across the room, he peered over his shoulder, and gave her a leer. “Your bed, dear weyrwoman.” The confused frown he received from her in return was an absolute delight. Well, he wouldn't keep her in the dark for much longer. F'ren looked back towards the bed, and considered it carefully. What was it H'koll had said? 'Heavy ironwood, and about as easy to shift as a wagon in a snowdrift – and that was just the first time.' Along with the frame and more legs than a bed rightfully deserved, it had a carved headboard that extended almost the height of a man, decorated with scrolling curls, knotwork and a letter-motif that dated its first owner to a weyrwoman who'd lived closer to the last Pass than the current one. It was a hideously solid waste of wood; no wonder that it hadn't left this weyr since then. A pair of men with two _full_ hands apiece would have a hard enough time lifting it; F'ren decided that the easiest thing for him to do would be to brace his legs against the wall on the far side, and push with his back. He wouldn't need to move it very far.

“You say it's possible, going between times,” he said as he lowered himself to the floor between the bed and the far wall. “You also think you've done – _are doing_ it.”

“That doesn't _help_. Thinking isn't knowing, and trying isn't the same as succeeding. We _need_ those records.”

“And you'll get them. Safely, easily, at a time of our choosing. And then you'll write some instructions to yourself, and you – or I – or someone we can trust – will slip them down behind that monstrous headboard.” He set his feet firmly against the wall and pushed back against the bed; it didn't budge an inch. “Shells, H'koll was right about it being awkward to move.” He was beginning to wish the first place he'd thought of hadn't been so awkward... but if he was right, the answer would be here, and nowhere else. With a grunt, he heaved against it again. This time it did shift a little, accompanied by a dull scraping sound. He hadn't yet moved it far enough, but at least he had more of an angle to work with now.

F'ren looked up, and saw Rahnis standing at the foot of the bed with her hands on her hips, staring back at him in disbelief. “That's the most lousy, circular logic I've ever heard,” she said.

“You want to travel _between_ times, and you want it to be _logical_?” He moved down the bed towards her, sat himself down on the floor and tried again, wincing at the noise. Another few inches would probably do it. “Which came first, the dragon or the egg?”

“Firelizards, if you believe the oldest records. Which I'm not sure I do.”

F'ren gave the bed another push, bringing the near edge of the headboard an extra full handspan away from the wall. “There. That should do it.”

“And you _really_ think there'll be something back there?” Rahnis said as she stepped carefully over his legs.

Smiling, he watched her crouch down and peer behind the bed. She made a small sound of surprise, and muttered something inaudible.

“I was right, wasn't I?”

Rahnis stretched out an arm behind the bed, straining to reach something, then gave up with a sigh. “I can't reach it. And I _still_ say your logic's dreadful.”

Ignoring her remark, he shoved the bed backwards one last time. “That enough?”

Rahnis stretched out her arm behind the bed, head and shoulders following. When she reappeared, hair and sleeve somewhat dusty, she was holding a small scrap of folded hide. She sat down on the bed, and started to open it out. F'ren pulled himself up, and sat down beside her. “What does it say?”

She held it up, and angled it towards the nearest glows. “ _I write this the day our clutch hatched_ ,” she read. “It's my own hand, F'ren. I _wrote_ this.”

“The very day you arrived here,” F'ren mused. “Sh'vek was with you in Ista, and I was with my Wing in Crom.”

She nodded, and started reading again. “ _I write this the day our clutch hatched, the eleventh day since our arrival at dawn. Having waited until now, we found the smith already in the hatching grounds, playing with feathers. He didn't know me or trust my companion, but the offer of iridescent shells persuaded him to help_.''

F'ren's heart sank as he listened. The words barely made any sense at all! A smith, playing with feathers? Offered the shells of dragon eggs on a hatching day? Did that mean she'd written of Ista? Had she even been sane when she'd written it? “Is all of it nonsense like that?”

“Hmm?” Rahnis took in his look of dismay, and smiled slyly. “Next time, don't be so smug about being _right_. I know what that means, even if you don't, yet. The smith is a laundry-drudge, simple minded, but with a talent for locks. I knew we were going to need his help already. Shall I go on?”

“Please.”

“ _My companion gathers supplies and silks while I gather knowledge that is rightfully proscribed: the dangers are subtle but deadly. Two things matter most of all. First, build your visual with care. Mark the moment precisely, exactly as old wherry-beak warned against.”_

“Wherry-beak?”

“P'sander, my old Weyrlingmaster. You must have had much the same lectures we did against overly-precise visuals, full of transitory details that human minds notice rather than the fixed _place_ itself.”

F'ren nodded. “Igen lost a whole wing of weyrlings to that, didn't they?”

“So they told us. I think they scare weyrlings with that one everywhere. As they should.”

“But if all it takes is a precise visual to go _between_ times... what else does it say?”

Rahnis read on. “ _...exactly as old wherry-beak warned against. Be accurate and specific if you wish to leave_ now, _and until dreams become memories, be guided by memory rather than dreams. But be warned: one dawn is much like another, and many are the days of our lives. Take heed of that if you wish to live to see them all. The second is_ equally _important, and must be balanced with the first. Act only with certainty, belief and a clear intent. Doubt not, for doubt will kill. The rest, you will read for yourself. Faranth willing it, too, will be enough.”_

F'ren waited for a moment, wondering if there was still more to come. Rahnis had her head tilted thoughtfully, her eyes flickering across the hide. “That's all you wrote?”

She turned the scrap of hide in her hand, and ran her fingers across it. “That's all. I can't feel any sign of indentations from a dry stylus, but they might not have lasted so long in any case.”

“May I?”

She handed the hide over to him silently, and he re-read it for himself. Oblique as it was – she must have been concerned for its discovery – he reckoned it could be broken down into a mixture of warnings and instructions. They'd arrived at the hold at dawn, the day after he'd first found it, going by the dates. Dawn – that would mark the time well enough – except, she'd also written a warning _not_ to rely on something as obvious as the sun. If, that is, that was what she'd meant those words to mean. “We arrive at dawn, but one dawn is much like another.”

“Mmm. That part worries me, too. There's seasonal shifts, but how do you tell the difference between this morning, and yesterday morning, or some very distant when in the very first Pass? I'm guessing that's where the clear intent comes in, but if you jump to a time where your intent doesn't quite match the reality...”

The outcome of a jump like that wouldn't be a good one. “Get it wrong, and you're lost _between_?”

“I think so.”

“So we need specifics.”

“So long as they're not _too_ specific, or inaccurate.”

He scanned the hide again. ' _be guided by memory_ ,' she'd written. _His_ memory, rather than _her_ dreams. “I'm to go with you, that much is clear. We get there the morning after Trath and I found it. If you want specifics, I broke one of the thread-shutters off, in the room with the spring.”

“And by the _next_ dawn, we can ensure that it'll look different some other way,” Rahnis said. “That's it. A unique place, at a unique time. It _will_ be enough.” She looked at him, and smiled. “Along with enough supplies for the first eleven days, that is. How quickly can you be ready?”

He grinned back, eager to begin the adventure with her – even if it meant helping her try to rescue her weyrmate in the past. _What do you think, Trath? Shall we do this?_

The dragon's reply came in an instant, as certain and as full of clear intent as F'ren could have wished for. _Shall we? But F'ren, we already_ have.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can't write epic Pern fanfic *without* timing, right? ;-) If you want to have fun, go back and see if you can spot the clues in the earlier chapters.
> 
> And yes, the lampshading by Rahnis was completely deliberate on my part...


	19. Chapter 19

_Far we've voyaged with the currents_  
 _Suffering wave and wind._  
 _Holds are full and hearts are hopeful,_  
 _Now the heavy tides are turning._  
 _Bearings made we watch for burning,_  
 _Flickering fires that draw us home._  


**Pre-dawn, 9.1.35**

**Ista Hold**

  
In the black of _between_ , Rahnis concentrated on the familiar sight of Ista Hold at night. The faintly luminescent sea, the sharp lines of the breakwaters, the gaping openings to the sea-caverns and, above the broad path that wound back alongside the Hold's small river, the main Hold itself. If the skies were clear, the twinned full moons would perfectly illumine the Seahold harbour and the roofing bordering the Gather Square, and cast strong shadows across the Hold's arched entryway, but Ista was just as prone to humid stormy weather in winter as it was in summer. Freshly aware of the dangers of a flawed visual, she focused on her memories of the pattern of beacons placed around the Hold to help guide in the ships: three in a close group on the fire-heights, two further down the cliffs to the west, and the greenish flickering from the fires on the breakwater, where dried seaweed was added to the fuel.

 _Flickering fires that draw us home..._ And there they were, flickering in the warm darkness of an Istan winter night, guiding her and Alaireth in as well as they ever did the fishing ships.

Alaireth adjusted the trim of her broad wings to make the most of the steady westerly wind, and began her descent towards the Hold. The deep tone of the sea-gong rang out as they overflew the harbour-tower – they'd lucked out with the weather after all, and in the bright moonlight the sudden appearance of a gold dragon would never have been missed. Well, the more people who saw them here, the better.

 _May as well head straight for the Gather Square_ , Rahnis thought to her dragon. _Any word from the Weyr?_

After talking things over with F'ren, they'd agreed that it would be most prudent to leave the Weyr separately. Rahnis had gathered as many essentials as she could from what she kept in her own weyr, but even with what F'ren could get hold of, they needed to acquire more supplies from somewhere else. Heading for Ista Hold was an obvious choice: she still had friends and family there, and could easily cadge enough foodstuffs for the first sevenday or so more discreetly than she'd have been able to do back at the Weyr. She'd waited until they were airborne before asking Alaireth to inform Kiath that they'd be spending the night away from the Weyr and would be back before noon the next day, then jumped _between_ before the older queen could forbid it.

 _She wouldn't have stopped us, tonight,_ Alaireth said. _Kiath regrets what happened, and says it would be good for us to have a little time away. Even if Ormaith disapproves – and she thinks he will – she did not. She is still the senior queen, and will make Ormaith and the Weyrleader listen to her._

Rahnis laughed in dry bemusement. _That's better than I'd hoped for._

Alaireth landed gracefully in the centre of the Gather square, and crouched low for her rider to dismount. Rahnis took her coat off and looped it into her flying straps, then slid to the ground in time to see one of the two large doors of the Hold being pushed outwards, followed by a loose-clothed figure bearing a glow basket.

“How can Ista Hold help you, weyrwoman?”

She squinted at the young man. “Senneck? Is that you?”

He lifted his glowbasket, and smiled. “Wondered if you'd recognise me, Rahnis.”

Her cousin had grown a moustache since she'd last seen him, but there was no mistaking those ears! “Of course I do. But I thought you were still fostered at Benden?”

“Came back at Turnover. Granda finally got the message that Lady Orya wasn't, wouldn't be, and hadn't _ever_ been interested in the likes of a younger son like me.”

Rahnis gave a low chuckle, and stretched out a hand to grasp her cousin's arm in greeting. “Or anyone's son, I imagine.”

“Try telling _him_ that.”

“Oh, I know. You should have seen his face when W'nil Impressed his green.”

Senneck let his chin drop and pulled in his cheeks in a near-perfect imitation of Ista's Lord. “Like this?”

“Almost. You're trying too hard; your eyes are crossing. And don't you _dare_ do that when the wrong people are around, or you'll end up in the Tannercraft like great-aunt Nissa, or scrubbing the fishholds with the drudges.”

“Eurgh.” Senneck grimaced. “I'll run off to the Weyr before that ever happens. How is Wald... W'nil, I mean. How's he doing? What's his dragon called?”

Rahnis had to think for a few moments before the name came to her. “Thyath. Honestly, I don't know how they're doing right now, but he'll make a fine rider, I'm sure. You know I was sent north?”

“It's been hard to keep track of all the changes at the Weyr, there've been that many of them.” He led her into the Hold's broad hall, and set the glowbasket back into its alcove in the wall. “Wasn't sure what to make of them, neither. We all thought the two of you were as much married to each other as dragonriders get...”

She flinched at his words, knowing that it wouldn't be the last time she heard their like here at the Hold. “Senneck, please. Not now.” Morning would be soon enough for that. She didn't expect that Lord Wallosen would hold back from giving her an earful of his opinions on her weyrmate – she'd never avoid him if she stayed the morning here, as planned – but by then, she thought could take them. By then, hopefully, things would be very, very different.

“Sorry, weyrwoman,” Senneck said. “What _can_ I do for you? Did you need to see Granda?”

“In the morning – I know it's late. I'd be very grateful for a guest bed too, but I have...an errand, of sorts, to deal with first. I was hoping someone here could help me with that.”

“Oh?”

“Four days' food for half a dozen men?”

“Why would you....” He tilted his head thoughtfully, then nodded to himself. “Aha! There aren't that many things an altruistic dragonrider can legally interfere with. And your new Weyrleader wouldn't approve of it...? Some needy Holdless, I'm guessing?”

Rahnis didn't disoblige him of the idea. “Holdless, mmm. You sound like a Harper, Senneck.”

“I didn't waste _all_ my time at Benden,” Senneck complained. “Learned a lot about all sorts of things – no harpering, not with _my_ voice, but a lot of Charter law. I saw some of the Holdless problems too, first-hand. Granda's got the idea of training me up as a steward, now.”

A Hold steward's role would fit Senneck down to the ground, far better than marrying an eligible but uninterested daughter of the Benden blood – or any of the other options available to a younger son. “That sounds like it'd suit you. Does it?”

He shrugged. “What else am I going to do? Beastcrafting like your side of the family? That's not for me, for sure! I can be useful here – and to you, too. Winters are tough up north. If they can Hold where no-one else can, let them have a chance at it. Look, you make yourself comfortable here, I'll get some refreshment sent in and see to what you need. Shouldn't take long.”

“You're a good man, Senneck.”

After her cousin had left, Rahnis sat down on one of the curving stone benches beside the nearest deep window, and unlatched the inner layer of shutters. Through the gaps in the colonnade, she had a good view down to the harbour and out to sea – and also the sky above the harbour, where dragons most usually emerged from between. F'ren had promised to follow them here within the hour, and then they'd make the jump to the past together. With luck, she and Alaireth would return here again another few hours after that, almost three months older than when they'd left. Then, back to the Weyr again before noon High Reaches-time, just as they'd told Kiath they'd do. F'ren and Trath wouldn't be here for a while yet, but if anyone else were to arrive from the Weyr, she wanted to know about it fast.

_I'm watching, too._

Rahnis moved along the bench until she could see Alaireth fully. The queen was already well laden with two carry-sacks full of essential items, and a hefty roll of fleece bedfurs which only partially masked the bulk of her flamethrower and a spare agenothree tank. F'ren would bring tools, hunting gear and some basic cooking equipment. Food had been the sticking point – raiding the Weyr's kitchen for food in bulk would have raised questions for sure, especially with the new restrictions in place, and they needed at least enough to last until they had a chance to return to the Weyr in the past. She ran through the full inventory in her head, trying to figure out if there was anything they'd overlooked. If everything went according to plan, they'd be leaving Ista for a northern dawn, and less than eight hours of daylight in which to get the abandoned Hold habitable enough to sleep in. Shells, she was already exhausted! Shells...yes, shells! They needed some of those as well, and Ista had them aplenty. Rahnis rose from the bench and made for the nearby workroom, borrowing the nearest glowbasket to light her way. Opportunities for idle crafting were few and far between in a Hold, but decorative shellwork was easy enough that even a child could manage it, and the better pieces would bring in good marks at Gathers, especially when traded at the inland Holds on the mainland. She'd never spent all that much time in the main Hold as a child, but she remembered enough to find a large crate of shells, and fished around for a few pretty ones to fill her pockets. They weren't as large as the pair she'd picked up for Pellick on one of Tillek's beaches, but she was sure the man would like them, especially the way they spiralled round and round and round...

_Rahnis?_

_Yes?_ She swiftly shoved the box back into its place, and sprang to her feet. _You've had word?_

 _Ormaith tells me that Sh'vek is not happy that we left so precipitously, but he has decided_ not _to order our return, provided we're back before noon, High Reaches time._

 _He probably guessed that we wouldn't come back if he did. Tell him that we'll be back by then, please._ _Did Ormaith have anything else to say?_

_Next time we wish to make a personal visit, we are to inform him in plenty of time, so he can arrange an escort suitable for a weyrwoman._

Her mouth went dry, and she swallowed anxiously. _That's fardling nonsense. He's not sending someone_ now, _is he?_

 _If we're not back promptly tomorrow, he'll send Pellenth to fetch us._ They _will not impinge on Ista Hold's hospitality unnecessarily._

 _That could have been worse. By tomorrow... well, morning's a long way off, for us._ She started back towards the Hold's main hall, when an item on one of the other workbenches caught her eye. A sextant, constructed of skybroom and brass. Several pieces of partially-engraved bright-work lay on the bench beside it, but the functional elements were already in place. It would be a useful thing to have...and it wouldn't _really_ count as theft as long as she replaced it before it could be missed. She found a leather bag just big enough to hold it, then returned to her seat beside the open window in the main hall.

Settling back against the wall, Rahnis watched the boats at anchor bobbing in the harbour. Most of the larger ones – ships, rather than mere boats – were still mastless. Thread must have fallen over the Hold earlier that afternoon, leaving enough time to get the sailing fleet back into the water, but too little to completely ready them for the next tide before nightfall. She pulled a piece of charcoal and a scrap of hide from her pocket, and quickly marked down which ships were anchored where. One of the larger hulls was painted in Boll colours – most likely a trading ship, risking an early run across to Keroon or Nerat.

Senneck returned before much more time had passed, accompanied by one of the night-shift drudges. “Rahnis? I think this should be enough,” he said as he entered the hall. “Got a sack of mixed tubers and white-root, smaller bags of rivergrain, whole and milled, a brace of smoked yellow-tail fish with the usual spicing, a jar of salted packtail in its own oil, and three jars of preserved orange-fruits from Boll. Oh, and some ground klah bark.”

“Thank you,” she said, rising from the bench. “That's perfect. More than I expected. How many marks do you want for it?”

"Marks? Nothing, from you. I'll see it's shaved off the Weyr's next tithe.” He directed the drudge to set the sacks down beside the door, then waved the man off. How long will your deliveries take you?”

That was a good question. “I'm not sure, to be honest.” She peered back down at the harbour and the dark line of wet stone, and checked the pattern of rocks jutting out of the sea. “Low tide's in another hour or so, right? I'll certainly try to be back by then.”

“Before you go....” Senneck held out his hand, and offered her a small stoppered bottle. “ _Fair Maid of the South_ gifted Lord Wallosen with several kegs of brandies.”

“Bribed, you mean. What are they smuggling?”

“It's for Half Circle. Hardwoods and seed-crops and sack after sack of tubers...but they're expecting to sail three ships west again, not just one.” He pressed the bottle into her hands. “Probably best if you don't mention that you saw them here. Do you need any help with the loading?”

Smiling, Rahnis shook her head. “No, I can manage. I'd best get started, mind. I'll see you later, Senneck.''

Rahnis paused beside the door to switch a few items from one sack to the other, balancing the weight a little better, then took them both back out to Alaireth. She pulled the drawstrings tight and tied them together, slung the sacks up and across Alaireth's neck, then stretched up to clip them into place onto her passenger straps. _Is that comfortable?_

Alaireth flexed her neck upwards, and gave her head a little shake. _Not really, but they'll stay in place well enough. Trath is overflying Nabol now, waiting for word that we're ready. I've told him we are._

 _Good._ Rahnis mounted up onto her queen. Ready they might be, but in truth, she wasn't sure she felt it. The anticipation was scouring at her insides, worse than she'd ever felt since the days of her weyrlinghood. She leaned forwards against Alaireth's neck, and stroked the queen's warm hide. Alaireth was there, always, beneath her hand and woven all through her mind. They could do this, together. They could! _Let's go. We'll meet them in the air._

As Alaireth's wings carried them back towards the sea, Rahnis started to assemble her own visual of the ruined hold, then quickly abandoned the idea. Her remembered perspective was too low to the ground, mostly buried in snow, and full of details that she wasn't certain she could rely on. Best to wait for F'ren and Trath.

_They're here._

Following Alaireth's prompting, she looked up to find them almost directly overhead. Trath spiralled lazily down to take a place off Alaireth's wingtip, and his rider waved a greeting.

 _Here_ , Alaireth said. _This is the visual. Trath says his rider wants you to take it, hold it, and then I will send back to them what you have in your own mind._

A standard weyrling exercise, but one she was grateful for. Rahnis concentrated her mind on the supplied aerial view of the valley. The sun was a warm glow she could sense rather than see over her right shoulder, and she wondered how certain F'ren was that the skies would be cloud-free.

 _Trath says he is,_ Alaireth said, having sensed her rider's concern. _He says it was warm and clear enough that a dozen different greens rose that day._

 _I suppose that's as good as we'll get._ Rahnis fixed the ridge line and the trickling watercourse in her mind. She left the stark line of the shadows across the western side of the valley vague, except for the certain knowledge that the Hold itself lay deep within them. _Dawn_ she thought. _The sun is_ there, _behind me, just on the horizon_. The other details were important, too. The gaping entrance to the hold and the stony debris beneath it, bare of snow. The two rows of three shuttered windows to the left, closed. The single line of seven windows to the right also mostly shuttered, except for the first one which swung limply ajar, and the third which was a blank hole in the rock. A man's height beneath the open window lay the broken shutter, a reddish flash of colour against the varied greys of the natural stone of the valley. _Dawn, and the broken shutter lying right there, and the valley and the Hold looking like... so. Send it back to them please, Alaireth._

 _Trath says the visual is good. I agree. I can take us there, and then._ Alaireth pulled the image into her own mind, and added the bronze dragon to it, beside and a little way ahead of her. _Trath will go ahead of us, and we will jump separately. If they fail, I will know._

 _If they fail? Wait!_ Too late to stop them, Rahnis watched helplessly as Trath and F'ren disappeared. _Alaireth, did they make it? Where_ are _they?_

Rahnis felt the dragon stretch her mind towards them, then stop.

 _They live, now. That is enough to know. I do not want to know_ where _they are, now, because I need to find them as they are_ then.

Rahnis took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled. Trath and F'ren lived. They'd gone to the past, and survived. Now it was their own turn. Another breath, filling her lungs in readiness as she concentrated on the valley, the Hold, the broken shutter, the sun and the bronze dragon. _Very well._ _Take us there, and then._

Alaireth jumped _between_.

The cold and the darkness and the _absence_ of _between_ were as absolute as always. Nothing to feel except the comfort of Alaireth's mind, and even her own heartbeats felt illusory, no more than a faint pulsing to her thoughts. _Six, seven, eight,_ she counted to herself, and then, _There, then_ , followed desperately in place of 'nine' and 'ten', as she fought down a rising tide of panic. Even when one lingered _between_ by choice, it never lasted as long as this; they should have been there by now, surely! But Alaireth was with her, strong and brave and certain.

 _Here, now_ , the dragon insisted, and brought them back into the daylight.

There was the valley. The Hold. Trath and F'ren, gliding smoothly through the air. Rahnis twisted her head round, and stared directly into the blinding dawn sun, right where she'd known it would be. A croaking shadow passed across it; she blinked and flinched before realising that it was just a wherry, disturbed by their sudden arrival. She drew in a shuddering breath and closed her eyes. _We're here. Thank Faranth, we're here!_

 

 

 

The days passed in a blur of exhausted activity. Growing drifts of snow steadily covered the valley floor almost halfway to the Hold's gaping entrance, turning the stony vista into a sea of white. Higher up the valley, the larger rocks jutted through the knee-deep snow much like mountain peaks piercing a clouded sky. The snow had started falling during the first night after their arrival, and the wind had carried it deep into the Hold itself, right onto the only space large enough for the two dragons to comfortably sleep. Weatherproofing the Hold had been one of their first priorities, and Rahnis still wished they'd been better prepared for the task.

Immediately after their arrival, F'ren had collected the broken shutter from where it had fallen and tried and failed to re-attach it to the rockface outside the kitchen. He'd brought some basic tools with him, butthere was only so much that anyone could achieve with a small handaxe, hammer, chisel, two dozen nails – over half of which were now bent and useless – a small spool of wire...and only one good hand. Charitably, Rahnis had suggested that the lack of decent lumber was the problem. She and F'ren had found little of any use within the old holding itself. In the end, the best they'd managed was to prop the broken shutter into a more-or-less upright position between the inner and outer surfaces of the thick rock wall, surrounded on both sides by enough stones to hold it in place. It kept the worst of the wind and snow outside, while still letting in a bit of light, and plenty of cold, fresh air. After several failed attempts to clear the drains in the old kitchen and the wreckage of the adjacent washroom, they'd been forced to give up – the obvious culvert further down the valley had clearly frozen solid well before it had got covered by the snow. Using some of the looser stones that littered the slopes, they'd settled for diverting the overflowing water into a more convenient channel. A short wall of snow screening the spring's exit from the inner caverns created a cold but functional 'necessary'.

After the first cold and sleepless night spent beside their dragons, she and F'ren had bedded down in a small storage room between the main hall and the more spacious but damp and draughty kitchen. Trath and Alaireth made the best of things for a second night, but on the following day F'ren had travelled westwards to one of the smaller coastal holds, returning with a stained and reeking length of old sailcloth that now formed a ragged awning that stretched halfway from ceiling to floor. It kept the worst of the weather out...although that was the _only_ good thing that could be said about it. The storage room was barely long enough for her own body, let alone for F'ren, but at least it was free of snake-holes, running water, draughts and smells, as well as being substantially warmer when the door was closed and both of them were inside. They'd quickly become accustomed to the physical awkwardness of their sleeping arrangements, but Rahnis couldn't help wondering if she might have been better off staying out beside Alaireth. At night, in the dark, it was all too easy to imagine that it was M'ton lying beside her, not F'ren. The illusion rarely lasted very long, but even after it passed she found a surprising amount of comfort in F'ren's presence. Manipulative or not, he'd proved to be far better company than she'd expected before they'd left – and a much better cook than she was, too. She still didn't think he was being completely honest with her – certainly not as far as his supposed feelings towards her were concerned – but his assistance was a particularly fitting recompense for his dishonesty. If he truly wanted her forgiveness and her friendship, helping her to save M'ton's life was how he'd have to earn it.

The outside temperature dropped more and more with every passing day, and they were running through their supplies of cromcoal much faster than Rahnis had anticipated. Four days after their arrival, F'ren broke through one of the shuttered windows to gain access to the ground floor rooms on the south side of the Hold, in the hope of finding any old furniture that might have been left behind; even if it had been in no state to be used, they could have burned it as firewood. Inside, they discovered a single large room with a central fire pit and chimney, and two deeper natural caverns where sleeping-alcoves had been hewn directly into the rock. It would have been a perfect alternative to the store room, had the alcoves _not_ been thick with writhing knots of tunnelsnakes. They had slightly better luck on the upper levels. The single staircase leading from the main hall had also ended in a deadfall, but with the help of the dragons they managed to climb up onto what was left of one of the crumbling upper rooms. After edging along the precarious sloping floor, they entered a corridor, finding two further small rooms and the top end of the staircase. Empty as the rooms were, there was no telling what purpose they'd once been used for... but the smaller of the two, warmed by the small trickle of yet another natural spring, was overrun with an abundance of glows. That, at least, was one item they no longer needed to worry about – unlike their food supplies. Returning to the main hall, they'd found several dozen tunnelsnakes of all sizes – likely the same ones they'd disturbed earlier – gnawing through the sack of tubers. She and F'ren had been setting traps for them ever since, but for every one they caught, another three or four seemed to crawl out of a different hole in the ground. Now, what was left of their food was slung beneath the awning; none of the tunnelsnakes had yet dared to venture that close to the dragons.

Setting her knife down on the rock beside her, Rahnis tugged the last of the snake's skin free of the flesh. It was the seventh one she'd trapped in as many days, although not one of the edible kind, unfortunately...not that the wherries seemed to notice the difference. She rinsed her hands and knife off in the spring, wiped them dry on her trousers, then returned to sit beside Alaireth at the Hold's entrance. The fog-shrouded valley was growing dark, and it would soon be safe to make their all important journey back to the Weyr. As exhausted as she was from the work of setting the old Hold to rights well enough to survive a full winter here, she still found it near impossible _not_ to think of what her other self was doing from moment to moment and day to day. Enjoying her last days at Ista with M'ton, making her goodbyes, fighting thread, arguing with M'ton, waiting on the sands with Alaireth for her queen's clutch to hatch.... Soon, her younger self would leave the Weyr that had been her home for over nine Turns, and the next time she saw M'ton and Narnoth again would be her last, unless she could now change her own past and his future. She bowed her head and hugged her knees close to her body. _Tell me we're doing the right thing, Alaireth?_

The dragon answered her with loving reassurance. _We're doing everything we can._

Rahnis wanted so desperately to talk to him, to see him again...but that was the one thing that she couldn't risk doing. Not yet, at any rate. After today, she'd know, finally, if Vallenka had been honest with her. If it _might_ be possible to save him, without causing a paradox that neither she nor Alaireth could survive. Or if she'd just have to wait, and feel him and Narnoth die all over again.

“Don't think about it.” F'ren sat down beside her and squeezed her shoulder.

“I know.” Rahnis let out a heavy sigh, and leaned in against him. “When do you want to leave?”

He tilted back his head to study the sky. She'd already trimmed his hair, to better match the length it had been the day she'd arrived, but he'd need to keep his collar up and sleeves down to hide the threadscores. There was nothing either of them could do to add length to her own hair, but a shapeless, tattered knit and klah-stained wher-hide over-vest made her look more like one of the Weyr's drudges than a weyrwoman. A snake-trap and one of the morning's fresh kills would complete the disguise. With luck, they'd get in and out of the Weyr almost unseen in any case.

“We can leave now, if you'd like,” F'ren said. “Trath's been keeping his ears open for the Wing movements, and he doesn't think we'll get many better chances later on. The weyrlings are still drilling in the bowl, so he'll bring us in close to the ground outside the Weyr, out of sight of the Watch dragon, but we'll still have a half hour trek up the lower slopes to the tithe-tunnel. With luck, he'll be able to touch the drudge's mind while we're on our way.”

“And if not?”

F'ren shrugged. “First person I see in the Lower Caverns can go fetch him.” He stood up, and pulled on a pair of heavy gloves, the spare fingers on the left hand stuffed with rags to mask the fact of his missing fingers. “You still want me to find _silks_ as well as everything else we need? We've a lot to carry, and if we can spare an extra sup-”

“Yes, shard it!” He really was being annoyingly matter-of-fact about the whole thing. “I wouldn't have written it down unless we needed them for something. There _will_ be a reason for it.”

For a moment, he looked as if he was going to argue the point. “At least the Weyr has them in abundance, I suppose.” His lips quirked into an ironic smile. “Ha. Egritte was right all along.”

“Oh?”

“Riders pilfering supplies.” Letting the smile fade, he stretched out his right hand, and pulled her to her feet. “Come on. You'll get the answers you need soon enough.”

 

 

 

The records extended back for centuries.

Many of the older records had either faded or rotted into illegibility, and there was a large gap covering a forty-turn period towards the beginning of the previous interval where no records existed at all. Even in more recent turns, a combination of bad handwriting and cheap ink made her task far harder than it should have been; Weyrwoman Katrin's gold clearly hadn't chosen her rider for her literacy! Of the records that Rahnis _could_ read, the bulk were made up of disciplinary records and commentary on other riders, including the Weyrleaders of other Weyrs, very much as she'd expected to find. Those, she scanned over and set aside as quickly as she could. Every now and then she happened across something more interesting, confusing, or just plain unbelievable amongst them. The Weyr had taken action outside of its traditional remit several times since the previous Pass, but had they _really_ abducted an entire generation of the Nabol blood? That record was more recent than some of the others, so she couldn't put it down to a transcription error, not like some of the _very_ peculiar things she found herself reading about events at the start of the Third Pass. A lot of the later warnings about timing seemed to be based on those events, but she could only find second-hand, decades-old references to them at best, and even those were patchy.

Rahnis carefully rolled up and tied another record that had begun in a promising fashion before rambling off in another direction entirely. Weyrwoman Malia's words had given her an interesting new idea, but nothing that bore any relevance to _timing it_ , as it was most commonly referred to. Another problem for another day; she took the hide over to the chest of clutch-records, and intentionally mis-filed it with the others of that era. Today, she didn't have _time_ to worry about anything else, as ironic as that was. It had been a slow and awkward process getting all the different facts straight – Vallenka almost certainly had her own private records in better order back at Ista – but she thought she was almost there. The only piece she was still missing was some kind of _proof_ that it was possible to cheat time, and save M'ton....

Timing had once been common knowledge in the Weyrs, so the records suggested. At other times, it had been forcibly repressed, explaining why the technique was now almost unknown. Detailed descriptions of _how_ the process worked were rare on the ground, but short notes that such-and-such a dragonpair had been _lost_ between, _likely while timing it_ , appeared with depressing frequency, though none since the death of Weyrwoman Perelane. As faded as they were, the records scrawled by Perelane's predecessor, Katrin, had actually proved to be some of the most useful to her search. On one such hide, Rahnis had found a complete description of how to build a successful between-times visual in simple language that any fool could understand, confirming everything that she and F'ren had already figured out. Along with the other dangers that she'd already known of, the terrifying, extra time that they'd both experienced making their jump to the past had been noted very matter-of-factly, together with a warning not to panic and lose hold of the visual because of it. However much of that M'ton had known before his death, Rahnis was certain that he'd been as ignorant as her of what Katrin had written next, in one of her oldest entries:

_Timing it is dangerous. Timing it makes you tired, because you live twice in the same time. Living twice is ~~kyoomyou~~ adds up, and you can't think right and you do things you shouldn't. It also makes most people be in a bad mood the whole time. _

It had all rung horribly true: the same exhaustion, moodiness and occasional bouts of recklessness and fuzzy-thinking had been with her ever since she'd moved north from Ista. As soon as she had been forced to see the truth of it, she'd realised that she'd been feeling the effects of timing it for even longer than that, and that it had only grown worse after arriving at Broken Hold, as they now called the place. Poor M'ton had doubled up on himself more than just the once; he _couldn't_ have known what he was doing to himself, otherwise he'd never have done it at all!

But Vallenka _would_ have known, all too well.

The knowledge was a heavy, aching weight inside her. It was only the slightest recompense that she now understood why she'd sent F'ren searching for silks: they'd be the perfect visual markers to guide him through time to her. If living twice in the same time was such a strain, she couldn't possibly permit him to stay with her any longer than absolutely necessary. This was primarily her own quest, and if anyone ought to shoulder the risks of timing it, it was her and her alone. He might not stand to gain as much as she did from the months she was re-living in her past, but he didn't _need_ to stay with her and Alaireth, either. All the essential work on the Hold was done, and the daily chores that remained certainly wouldn't occupy her entire day. She'd miss F'ren's company...but perhaps that was a good thing: she was doubted that he'd set his own agenda aside _completely,_ no matter how respectful he was of her boundaries. If he stayed, the tensions between them would only grow, whether they were caused by the ill-effects of timing it or not. No, it would be better to send F'ren away, if only for the sake of his safety. Except for supply runs, she and Alaireth would have to sit out the months in the past alone.

Full of determination that her venture wouldn't end in failure, Rahnis moved swiftly on to the next set of records and applied herself to her search. Knowing _why_ M'ton and Narnoth had died didn't bring her any closer to changing their fates and saving them. Hide after hide, she found herself reading variations of Vallenka's warning to her again and again.

_A dangerous business, timing, and you can never, ever change what's happened. He's dead and keened for. Will you take Alaireth back to a when that you both know never was?_

It would be the simplest thing in the world to visit M'ton at Ista, and warn him of what lay ahead. They'd live, where once they'd died. But who then would have any cause to travel _between_ times to warn them? Not the other Alaireth and Rahnis of three months past, that was for sure. Coming back with a warning from the future, she and Alaireth would create a paradox, an impossible, contradictory timeline. As hard as it was to bear, Rahnis had been forced to accept that Vallenka was right. All the records that spoke of such things confirmed it: every time a dragonpair jumped through time hoping to change past events, they never, ever returned.

Stubbornly pushing her despair aside, she pulled out the last half dozen unread hides from the back of the cabinet. A loose scrap of hide fluttered free along with them. Rahnis gathered it up from the floor, and squinted at the faded script. Illegible, like so many others... and then she remembered where she'd seen a scrap of hide just like this one before. It didn't yet have the creases the other copy had held when she'd unfolded it back in her weyr – but soon, oh yes, it _would_ have them!

Careful not to damage the cracking hides, Rahnis unrolled each of the records in turn. On the fourth one, she found the snippet of information that she'd unknowingly been searching for all along – a tale of a rider who'd grown desperately ill with fever, and whose dragon had disappeared _between_ in panic during the night. Unable to sense the green, and fearing the worst when the green's rider had slipped further into catatonia, the Weyr's watchdragon had keened for her, waking the Weyr. But a sevenday later, the green reappeared. She hadn't jumped aimlessly into death – she'd been called forward through time by weyrwoman Malia and her queen, and by Malia's son – the green's own rider, now restored to full health. Malia, like Delene, had been able to hear all dragons. Well, Rahnis couldn't do that, but she and Alaireth could still reach Narnoth well enough. Here in the past, they'd be able to mark the time of the bronze dragon's fateful jump _between_ – and knowing the _when_ and the _where_ , connecting with them with all the strength and love they had, they could try to pull them into a future that _none_ of them had yet lived. There was no guarantee of success, but neither would they create a lethal paradox out of the attempt.

 _I didn't know if it would work_ , Malia had written. _They say you can't break time, but sometimes you can cheat it. The trouble is, you can only try the same trick once._

One chance, Rahnis would have to save Narnoth and M'ton. Just the one.

Faranth willing, it would be enough.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the nod to Todd's books third-pass books was deliberate... ;-)
> 
> The next update will be on Wednesday or Thursday this week and stay twice weekly for a while - I've got this last couple out a little ahead of schedule so that the AO3 updates are running one chapter ahead of FF.net again.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a query over at FF.net regarding some incidental details in the last chapter - why would anyone smuggle wood and seeds to Half Circle? Well... [1] they had their fields decimated by Thread late in the autumn, and are in desperate need of new seed stock, and [2] hardwoods are probably the most valuable item on Pern - there's a reason why they make their coinage out of it! Following on from that, why is /Fair Maid of the South/'s trip being kept quiet? Because they're making Half Circle an offer they can't refuse: essential edible and valuable goods in exchange for *two deepwater vessels*, and all the value in trading potential/human expertise that that entails. Half Circle need food and supplies and materials to keep their fishing fleets running in the short term, but if a western Hold acquires two major ships from them, that's going to have a severe impact on the Hold's long-term profitability. And given the dispute over tithing-rights in the Weyrs right now, the Boll Holders would not be impressed if Ista Hold let the secret out, especially after having bribed the Hold to stay quiet. I didn't give a whole lot of emphasis to this in the previous chapter - like I said, it's an incidental detail - but there's plenty more going on in this Pern than just what I'm showing you in the Weyrs. Mostly, it's one in the eye from Boll's Lord Holder to Lord Lomer of Nerat, who is trying to squeeze Half Circle for reasons of his own... The politicking here isn't limited to the POV characters! ;-)

_Listen for the slithering, pattering, skittering_   
_Tunnelling and burrowing night-time fiends._   
_Trap them, snare them, don't forget to 'ware them._   
_Fangs bite deep and venom makes you swell!_

_Chevroned, large limbed, raider of the kitchens_   
_Timidly it hides away, listen for it scratch!_   
_Trap them, snare them, don't forget to 'ware them._   
_Fangs bite deep and venom makes you swell!_

_Blotch-hide and red-striped, scavenger and hunter_   
_Venomous in fang and flesh, kill them both with care_   
_Trap them, snare them, don't forget to 'ware them._   
_Fangs bite deep and venom makes you swell!_

_Brown-striped, long fanged, grows as long as any man_   
_moves fast, thinks slow, easiest to catch_   
_Trap them, snare them, don't forget to 'ware them._   
_Fangs bite deep and venom makes you swell!_

_Search in the glow-light for sandtrails, clawmarks_   
_Check the cracks and crevices, seal them well_   
_Trap them, snare them, don't forget to 'ware them._   
_Fangs bite deep and venom makes you swell!_

 

**Morning, 17.12.34**

**Broken Hold.**

 

Holding Rahnis tight against his chest, F'ren tried his best to ignore the sound of an uncertain Alaireth keening her mate's apparent death for a second time.

“It doesn't mean he's dead,” he muttered into her hair. “It doesn't. You know that.” He tried to give his words the conviction that he himself lacked. Her plan to rescue M'ton and Narnoth from their death _between_ might be theoretically possible, but that didn't mean he'd give very good odds for its success. “Don't think of them like that, think of them alive, coming back to you again.” In truth, the weyrwoman couldn't afford to grieve for them any more than she already had. If he'd understood things right, those odds would only grow slimmer if she did.

She pushed free, and rubbed at her eyes with the heel of one hand. “It's just been so _hard_ F'ren, knowing what was coming, _watching_ them both, and not being able to warn them.” She choked back a sob. “Even knowing it had to be done....”

“A small price to pay, if you manage to draw them forwards.” It _had_ been a difficult morning, even before taking the emotional toll into account. Trath and Alaireth had tracked M'ton and Narnoth through several different timelines concurrently, while Rahnis made notes of the times and angles that they'd both marked out with sextant and shadows. They'd known from the outset that M'ton had left Rahnis to fight Thread...but not the exact when and where of their disappearance during the Fall, nor whether they'd found themselves in yet another time or location after their mistake. It had been gruelling, emotional work for the weyrwoman and her dragon.

Rahnis essayed a small, hopeful smile. “We _will_ get them back. I felt something, earlier... an echo, almost. I'm sure it was Alaireth and myself. Something good for me to think about while you're gone.”

Knowing a dismissal when he heard one, F'ren called Trath down from the ridge. “We can stay longer if you need us to.”

She shook her head. “You've done more than enough for us today already. Go. You'll see us again soon enough. Fourth of next month, noon. I'll use the red silk next, and make sure Alaireth's in her usual spot on the ridge.”

F'ren watched her make her way back into the Hold with Alaireth before he mounted up. Their first stop would be back in time to the cached supplies, left just outside an old out-of-the-way Thread shelter close to the Weyr. F'ren pictured the scene as he'd left it: there were now only two of the original four sacks of perishable goods lying on the ground, and a separate small bag suspended from a tether-post, steadily spilling the sand that he'd scooped up from the Weyr's Hatching grounds. Actually, right now there'd be nothing left at all, but he wasn't after now, but then. He set his mind on his requirements firmly. _Got it, Trath?_

_I do._

Trath took them _between_ , and F'ren was on the ground again well before his make-shift sand-timer had emptied. The dark clouds in the sky were tinged a yellowy brown, threatening a heavy snowfall – he could have done with stopping for a meal and a nap before returning to Rahnis, but with weather like that approaching, he didn't fancy extending the time he spent in _this_ now any longer than he had to. A few minutes' work saw the next sack slung up over the bronze's neck along with a bag of firestone taken from inside the shelter. The last job was to re-fill the sand-timer. Mounting again, he visualised Broken Hold, with Alaireth perched on the ridge, and Rahnis standing at the entrance, waving the makeshift red silk flag in a single wide circle. One clear moment in time, a little over a month ahead of his current _now_ , and a little less than two sevendays since she'd last seen him in her own timeline. Spent like this, his sojourn in the past was vanishing far quicker than he'd ever expected it to.

Holding the visual and the thought together, Trath took them _between_ again. _Alaireth says she's happy that the time is passing swiftly for us,_ he thought with a rumbled laugh, _but it's dragging_ very _slowly for them_.

F'ren laughed back. He couldn't argue with the logic of making his visits as brief as possible, even though it had meant that his own hopes for the sevendays he'd missed had been forcibly set aside. “Well, well. Maybe she'll let me stay a little longer, this time.”

_Alaireth says you can. She says that Rahnis has a snow shovel ready and waiting for you._

_Ha!_

Looking down at the valley as they glided in, he realised that it was looking more and more like the version of Rahnis' own dreaming. High drifts of snow half obscured the entrance to the Hold now, and it was on top of one of those that Rahnis was standing. The stumpy ends of sheared-off icicles hung from the upper lip of the entrance – enough warm air must have followed the last snowfall to set it melting during the brief hours of daylight. F'ren pulled off his gloves and stuffed them through his belt, and curiously licked a finger. The cold air barely bit into him at all. _We were right to bring the firestone today, I think._

 _Yes. Though I do not like the idea of fighting Thread alone. That would be almost as bad as not fighting it at all!_ The dragon backwinged above the ground, trying to find a good spot on which to land.

 _That patch looks quite compact_ , F'ren suggested, nodding towards a spot close to the entrance.

 _If you're sure..._ Trath settled onto the snow, and immediately sank in halfway up to his belly. _Well. I'm not moving_ now. _I suggest you get shovelling!_

F'ren slid down from his dragon's neck with a groan, and floundered through the heavy, wet snow towards the weyrwoman. He'd beat a path down first, _then_ get the supplies unloaded from Trath. “Your tithe-train, weyrwoman,” he called out to her. Now that he got closer, he could see that it was one of the larger rocks she was standing on, not the drifted snow at all. A compacted path snaked back to the Hold behind her.

“Welcome back, F'ren,” she said, holding out a hand to help him clear of the last of the deep snow. He caught a foot on a hidden lump of ice, and stumbled the last steps few steps awkwardly. Rahnis made a quick grab for his arm, and almost lost her own footing in the process.

“Feels like I never even left.” That earned him a small smile, far better than the concerned frown it had replaced. All things considered, she was looking fairly well – the signs of exhaustion and strain were still there, but no worse than before. He stomped his feet, dislodging a few clinging clumps of snow from his trousers. “What news? And what's the date?”

“It's the fourth of the month, so you've not missed threadfall. Half the wherry-flock has decided to roost elsewhere... but the tunnelsnakes still seem to be enjoying our company,” she said wryly.

F'ren eyed the dangling snake skins twisting in the wind just inside the cavern, and whistled. Several were getting on for a third of a dragonlength in size. “Big ones, too.”

“Alaireth despatched those two for me. Shard it, F'ren, couldn't you have found me somewhere a _little_ less infested with vermin?”

“I could al-”

Rahnis cut him off firmly. “No. You're not staying here any longer than you have to. You know why, F'ren.”

He still hoped to argue her out of that opinion – they'd both survived her time in the past the first time they'd lived those days and months, and if he stayed with her here until the day they'd left the Weyr came round again, he'd be at no more risk of dying _between_ like M'ton and Narnoth had done than she was. “I don't see that it makes all that much difference.”

She rolled her eyes. “No? Then _you_ ,” and she poked his chest in emphasis, “are not thinking straight. Are you?”

He swayed backwards a little as he turned. _Am I not, Trath?_ He turned to look at the bronze, now sprawled more comfortably on the flattened snow. The dragon's eyes whirled in amusement.

_Thinking straight? Do you ever? I will say, she thinks you're pushing your luck. In every sense. Be content that she trusts you, and don't give her cause to change her mind._

Trath was right, as usual. He _knew_ the risks, and it wasn't like him to ignore them completely just for the sake of spending more time with her. With two of them staying here, they'd run through their supplies twice as fast. He'd need to acquire more stocks from the Weyr, and return to his cache of perishables more frequently. Every trip he made _between_ times was another added risk, and the longer he lived double-timed the harder each jump would become. Not that he and Trath couldn't manage it... but it _did_ make sense to avoid any chance of things going wrong. Judging by the number of new snake skins, Rahnis and Alaireth were more than capable of looking after themselves while he was gone.

 _Of course they are,_ Trath thought indignantly. _She doesn't_ want _to need your help. Whether her weyrmate returns or not, she doesn't want to owe you anything more than she already does._

_Alaireth told you that?_

_You did. It is something you know as true, even if you haven't thought it yet. You're supposed to be doing this to help her, not to help yourself._

_In that case...._ F'ren traced the thought back to another heartening implication. S _he doesn't_ want _to argue with me, either, does she?_

_Better hope she doesn't realise it. She'll only find a reason._

Chuckling, F'ren turned back to the weyrwoman. “Perhaps you're right, Rahnis.”

“Agreeing with me now? You _are_ in a bad way, F'ren.” She smiled again, and tossed her head towards the Hold. “There's klah ready by the brazier. I'll get the supplies down from Trath while you go in and warm up. Faranth help us, Thread had fardling well better _not_ fall in this valley today.”

 

 

 

An hour later, F'ren watched from astride Trath's neck as Thread fell safely north of Broken Hold's valley. It was the tail end of one of the Threadfalls that fell over several of Crom's smaller mineholds, a Fall that Telgar's Wings would have fought only as far as the mountains. Beyond that, there was nothing but wherries and barren tundra; even thread would struggle to burrow up here, and it wasn't worth the risk to the Weyr's dragons and riders to fight it past the boundaries of inhabited lands. The pattern of Threadfall at this latitude meant that Broken Hold's valley would have been at risk again in another five days' time, but then not again until well after Turnover. Although you could predict with some accuracy _when_ any given Threadfall would strike, the exact location of the first Threads of the leading edge could be off by a good day's march. He didn't have quite the same feel for these north-east falls as he did for those that fell over High Reaches territory, but when a wide-corridor fall like the one that had just passed had drifted as far north as it had, the next few ought to do the same. A pity, really – he wouldn't be back here again before Turnover now.

In the air to the west of them, Alaireth circled on a thermal, gleaming a bright tawny gold in the winter sunlight. He let Trath watch her for a few more minutes while the instinctive urge to flame the Threads slowly began to fade from the bronze's mind.

 _I do have_ some _flame in my belly,_ Trath reminded him, along with the merest hint of a suggestion that they could still take out a few Threads from the boundary of the Fall.

_Not our fight, not today. Save it for clearing the snow back at the Hold._

Trath rumbled indignantly. The dragon's fierce enthusiasm was compellingly contagious, and F'ren found his own emotions being stirred in sympathy. There was nothing quite like being partnered to a predatory, fighting dragon to make a man feel like a man. Adrenaline surging, with a powerful sense of his own invincibility... it was a dangerous combination, even when you channelled it towards the Threads. Today, he and Trath would need to find another outlet. _Tell Alaireth they'll be clear of Thread for the foreseeable future,_ he thought to Trath, _and ask her if she wants us to track down those missing wherries._

_She says they're quite capable of figuring Threadfall patterns out themselves, even without a map and a spacer, and that we'll only scare the wherries further off if we hunt them down. But I shall take one of the ones still left in the valley._

Hunting _should_ help, he supposed, but Trath had only fed a few days earlier. He'd have to check with Rahnis whether that was yet another effect of all the timing they'd been doing. _You're hungry again already?_

 _It'll be months before my_ next _meal_ , Trath replied, greatly amused by his own joke. _Besides, I do want to hunt._

_You want to show yourself off for Alaireth, that's what you want._

_Oh, I wonder why?_

The bronze banked and dropped through the air, exchanging height for speed as he made his way west, then catching an updraught from the nearby ridge of hills. F'ren found himself smiling, sharing the dragon's exhilaration in the pure freedom of flight. They soon drew level with the queen again, and kept pace with her easily back to Broken Hold. There, Trath spent the little flame he'd built up on clearing some of the compacted snow and ice that had tripped his rider, and, after regurgitating the ash close to the worst of the snake-tunnels, launched himself skywards again. F'ren was all set to watch the dragon at his hunt – it was always a valuable way to assess your dragon's flight – when Rahnis invited him inside for some more klah. She looked troubled.

“What is it?” he asked, taking the extra mug from her hands.

Rahnis said nothing until they were well inside the hold, and had sat down beside him on a pair of old sacks she'd stuffed with wherry-feathers. “It's about you, F'ren, and your Wing. Alaireth and I know who was behind the attempt on your life a few days ago.”

“Which one?”

She baulked, briefly. “There was more than one?”

“I'm a _very_ popular man. So. The time Benth almost flamed us?”

Rahnis nodded. F'ren sipped cautiously at the hot klah and eyed her steadily, no longer certain that he even wanted to know the answer to that particular puzzle. The way his Wing had improved recently, he'd hoped to have put it all behind them, had almost started believing that it _had_ just been a simple accident. Outside, Trath made his kill, and began descending down to the valley floor to feed. F'ren thoughtlessly gulped down another scalding mouthful. “I know it wasn't T'been. Avret... she's not smart enough to have been the one behind it. All I had after that was guesswork.”

“It was Sk'barn.”

He thought he'd mis-heard her at first. Of all the riders it might have been – and he still trusted barely a handful of them even now, very much a _left_ handful – Sk'barn had been well towards the bottom of the list.

“ _Sk'barn_? Are you sure?”

“Alaireth overheard Orryth and Sacquith talking, right at the start of the Fall.”

“Orryth? I wouldn't place much credence in anything you heard from her.”

She gestured him to be quiet. “It was Sacquith we were most interested in – Alaireth's been concerned about him for a while now. Anyway, Orryth said, _you were right, Trath_ does _come back low.”_

An unpleasant sense of dread grew inside him. “It's not unusual for the second shift to follow the Fall's progress with one of the first shift dragons.”

“No, but that's not the only thing we heard. Sk'barn had Sacquith tell Benth and T'been what his father looks for in promising wingriders, though it sounded like more of a reminder than anything else. Encouragement to flame as much thread as he could whenever you called him forwards. I think you were right about T'been being a dupe.”

“And Avret? Vorth was the other dragon out of position.”

“Sacquith sent her an image, four lumps of firestone suspended in the air, two large, two small. After what you and St'larna had already told me about the incident, the geometry was unmistakable.” She paused, giving Alaireth and Trath enough time to share what the queen had seen with him. “At the time, I don't think the dragon saw anything deeper in it than what he passed on to Vorth, that Sk'barn said it was a present for Avret, _stone to help them flame their problems away_.”

F'ren swore. Neither the klah nor the nearby brazier did a thing to warm the chill he was feeling now, despite the remembered heat of Benth's flame burning in his mind. He closed his eyes, and swore again, repeatedly. Sk'barn, of all of them! His wingsecond's son was one of the sharpest riders in the whole bunch, and easy-going enough that he'd been one of the first to build bridges between the different cliques. How in Faranth's name was he supposed to deal with him _now_? Call him out for it in public, and inevitably have his father take the blame on himself? Punish the lad privately, and tear Snowfall to pieces in the process? He wanted to tear the _stupid_ boy limb from limb for this. To plan and attempt an atrocity like that... oh, the lad was sharp, but not sharp enough by far to avoid what he had coming to him now!

F'ren indulged himself in the fantasy of staking the boy out for Thread for all of two heartbeats. _Oh, Trath. Ever since T'forgil nearly got them killed, he's been fardling terrified out of his mind, hasn't he? We were too concerned for P'lok, and not enough for the rest of them._

_What will you do?_

_What_ can _I do?_ He opened his eyes, and drained the last of his klah. “Sk'barn nearly lost himself _between_ , not long before that.”

“He blames you for it.” Rahnis made it a statement rather than a question.

So had Sh'vek, for that matter. From the little he remembered of that particular conversation, the Weyrleader might even have had a good point... of sorts. F'ren shrugged. “Better reason to want me dead than _some_ of his wingmates have.” He sighed, and set his cup aside. “I'm open to suggestions, Rahnis. You said that Alaireth had sensed something wrong in Sacquith already?”

She nodded. “I don't know how much Sacquith knows, even now. As to what Alaireth picked up from him, it might just be Sk'barn's fear at second hand, or guilt, or the fact that Sk'barn's just not confiding fully in his dragon and Sacquith can feel _that_.”

“I think... I think I need to have a long chat with D'barn.” A state of mind like that was dangerously unhealthy for a dragonpair, and there was no way he'd believe the man could have missed it in his own son. Had _D'barn_ known what his son had tried to do? If he had... even if he hadn't colluded with Sk'barn directly, any wingsecond who covered up for other riders, allowing that kind of criminally destructive anxiety to fester, was not one F'ren would ever accept in his own Wing. He very much hoped that the man would turn out to be someone he could still trust as a second. If so, it'd be best to leave Sk'barn's punishment up to him; discipline was traditionally served by a Wing's seconds in any case. If not, the implications for F'ren's continued leadership of his Wing were obvious. _One_ of them would have to relinquish their knots for sure.

_What do you think, Trath?_

_Let it rest for now. Time will tell._

Belatedly, he turned his attention back to Rahnis. The weyrwoman was eyeing him thoughtfully.

“Alaireth says you took it well,” she said. “She wasn't certain that you would.”

The question was past F'ren's lips before he could help himself. “And you?”

“And why should the question of what kind of a man you are matter to me, F'ren?” Her tone was dry enough, but there was the slightest hint of a smile there too.

Ouch. Time to go. F'ren pulled himself to his feet, and gave her a lazy salute. “Thank you, Weyrwoman. I'll see you at Turnover.”

 

 

 

_F'ren? Wake up, F'ren. The storm clouds are getting very close now._

F'ren blinked awake, and pushed himself half upright. _I was asleep?_ He scowled at his bedroll, wondering where the memories of unrolling it had got to. Lost _between_ , like the rest of his wits, no doubt.

_You were asleep. You needed it._

He didn't remember starting a fire, either, but it was down to embers now. By rights, he ought to take an axe to one of the scrubby trees lining the slope beyond the path, and re-stock the shelter's fuel. A wagon-team could spend days in a spot like this if the weather worsened while they hid from Thread, but no-one with any sense at all would be coming this way again soon. He eyed the wood pile, and decided that it was ample enough. He could check on the shelter when he was only living once again, and make up for what he'd used then.

 _How long?_ he asked Trath.

_I wasn't watching._

F'ren smiled, guessing that the dragon had made the most of a chance of some sleep as well. Trath needed his rest, too. He pulled an extra knitted top out of his pack of clothes, and tugged it over his head. Coat and boots followed, then hat and gloves. Time to be off. He kicked sand over the remaining embers of his small fire, swung the pack over his shoulder, and made his way outside. Trath was waiting beside the last of the supplies, and the several new bundles he'd acquired earlier that afternoon. Perhaps he shouldn't have made those extra visits to the Crafthalls, but Turnover wasn't Turnover without a few gifts. He stooped down to gather up the wineskin – it was nicely chilled now, that was certain.

 _Aren't you going to load up the other sacks first?_ Trath prompted.

“Good plan.” He lowered the skin carefully back to the ground and dropped his own pack beside it. The next task was to tighten Trath's straps and to reattach the sling-piece. The sacks of food and Cromcoal were slung straight over the dragon's neck, followed by the fine blankets neatly rolled within a protective outer layer of oiled hide, complete with the Weaverhall stamp assuring the quality of the contents. As icy as the air was here and now at the head of the mountain pass that led to the Weyr, it'd be worse by far at Broken Hold at Turnover. Rahnis had made comments enough about the chill of winter back at the Weyr, and he'd known from his sweeps the first time he'd lived through Turnover that the temperature north of the Weyr would soon drop even further. As soon as everything was firmly attached, Trath rose onto his feet, giving F'ren room to stow his own pack, the wineskin, and the small crate of breakable jars of preserves into the belly-sling. Last was the empty sack hanging from the tether-post. There was something else missing, he was sure.

 _What about the bedroll?_ Trath suggested. _I think you left it inside._

He had, hadn't he? He took a half step back towards the thread-shelter just as the wind rose and the first stinging missiles of sleet struck his exposed face. No-one would be through here soon; he might as well leave it there....

 _She'll only send us back here for it if you do,_ Trath warned.

Growling, F'ren dashed back into the shelter. He tucked the bedroll under his arm without bothering to tie it properly; knots were still causing him problems, especially when the thing you were tying didn't want to stay put. It, too, got stuffed into the belly-sling. He flexed his fingers firmly, testing their strength, then leapt up to grab one of the hand-holds on the straps. He made an ugly climb of it, but at least he was managing to mount his own dragon without slipping more often than not.

For what would be the penultimate time, F'ren visualised Broken Hold. Remembering what the weather conditions had been – or, rather, _would be_ like at Turnover, he altered the perspective, moving their arrival point as close to the ground as he dared.

_Can you manage that, Trath? There's a good chance of low cloud._

The dragon sprang into the sky. _Certainly. I can go even closer if you like._

_Do that, and you'll knock Rahnis down with your backwinging. This should be enough._

He held the visual as they went _between_ , glad that Rahnis had chosen a dark colour for this day's marker-flag, a blue that was almost black – it ought to stand out well against the snow. Even so, he had to strain to see her through the heavy fog they emerged into. _Shells, I was right. Any further out and we wouldn't have seen her at all!_ It was a worrisome thought.

Rahnis, too, seemed greatly relieved by their safe arrival. She cried his name and flung herself into his arms the moment he reached her, and clung to him tightly.

F'ren squeezed her back. _I rather like_ this _development,_ he thought to Trath.

The dragon's reply was sobering. _This was the fourth time she tried to mark time for us. The fog has been very thick all morning, and she knew we'd be concentrating on it being Turnover. She was very, very worried for us._

 _Fourth?_ F'ren almost staggered at the mere thought. If the fog hadn't thinned as much as it had... he looked up at where they must have appeared and let out a long sigh: the grey of the fog bank was almost featureless, except where it was thickening again to fill the turbulent hole left in Trath's wake. “Happy Turnover, Rahnis,” he murmured. “Wouldn't have missed it for anything.”

She stepped back and gave him a grimace. “I _was_ starting to wonder.”

Trath followed them towards the Hold, where the supplies could be unloaded more comfortably. The snake skins were gone from the entrance, but she'd left a full bucket of water near where they'd been hanging. Several fingers' widths of clouded ice had lifted above the bucket's rim as the contents had frozen and expanded. F'ren smiled to himself as he passed it by: she'd planned on giving him a dousing, he suspected. The spring itself had built up a growing series of rippled mounds of ice as it descended – he'd have to have Trath flame it back into meltwater again soon if it got much worse, else there wouldn't be room for the dragons to come and go.

Inside, Alaireth was sprawled across the full length of her makeshift couch. She lifted her head and bugled a greeting, then pulled in her limbs and tucked her legs beneath her like a feline. Trath moved in to fill the empty space beside her as soon as the last of his straps had been unbuckled.

“Shall I start putting them away?” F'ren asked, gesturing at the supplies. Rahnis was kneeling beside the sack of foodstuffs, inspecting its contents. She rocked back onto her heels, and looked at him thoughtfully.

“I think you should stay.”

“We already agreed that Trath and I'd stay for Turnover.”

She shook her head. “Not just for Turnover, F'ren. If you and Trath are up for hunting us a few more wherries, I think we can eke this lot out. You won't get the feast I'd planned for us tonight, but you won't have to time it again, either. It's just not worth the risk.”

“No, I suppose not.” He smiled across at Trath, half-aware that he was the dragons' current topic of conversation. _Anything I should know?_

 _Alaireth missed me,_ his bronze said smugly, keeping his attention firmly focused on the queen. _Ask me later, F'ren._

 

 

 

Food might have been in limited supply, but a skin of Benden White followed by brandy-laced klah was more than enough to make the evening a merry one and the following day an utter misery. Rahnis had been very appreciative of the extra blankets, woven in tones of sea blue and green and white that he'd rightly guessed would remind her of the tropical beaches they'd each grown up with. He received several of the better cured snake skins in return, and, a few days later, a swathe of bronze silk embroidered with an image of Broken Hold's valley at dawn. As talented as she was with a sewing needle, she still hadn't mastered any more than the basics of the High Reaches' own art of knitting. Ignoring her repeated jibes at his own taste in headgear, F'ren persisted in getting her to sit down with her needles for long enough to create a hat of her own, patterned with overlapping waves of colour.

Talk of past and future naturally filled their time. Delene was a particular worry to Rahnis. How would she act once Maenida's retirement confirmed her position as the High Reaches' next Weyrwoman? Was it wise for Alaireth to defer to Linnebith's authority simply to keep the peace, or did it risk the Weyr not accepting Alaireth as senior when the queen eventually rose to mate? On one issue she was adamant: F'ren should be attentive to the other weyrwoman, if only because Sh'vek would expect nothing less. As beautiful as Delene was, F'ren found the prospect surprisingly distasteful. There was no nuance to the woman's character, none of the rich depths of spirit that a queen's rider ought to have. Even so, F'ren was inclined to agree with Rahnis. They couldn't afford to let his actions give any part of their scheme away, and if Rahnis was with her weyrmate again, he could hardly use his own emerging feelings for her as an excuse to favour her over Delene. Wryly, he admitted as much to her.

Rahnis gave him a withering look. “I still say you want the Weyr, not me. You barely know me, F'ren.”

“Better than I did. More than well enough to see why Alaireth chose you.” He re-filled her mug of klah from the kettle, and grinned across at Trath, who'd been listening to them talk with interest. “Trath said... no, maybe I shouldn't tell you that, eh? Don't want to give all our secrets away.”

Above her raised mug, Rahnis rolled her eyes. “Weyrwoman's choice, F'ren. You can't ever deny that.”

“Really? Rahnis, I'm flattered. You barely knew me!”

“Fine!” she said, blushing. “With a few notable exceptions. Although...thinking of that, I came across something interesting while I was going through the records at the Weyr. You know of Weyrwoman Malia?”

That was going back a long time, a century or more if he remembered his weyrling lessons right. “The one who took almost the entire conclave of Lords Holder to her bed?”

“Shells, no! Malia was the last Weyrwoman of the High Reaches who could hear all the dragons. You're thinking of Agalia, and it was _only_ three. Or five, if you include the minor Holds, but you can't tell me that the average bronzerider doesn't do far, far worse than _that_.”

“So what did you find? About Malia, that is?”

“I don't know how true it is, but she was never in _any_ doubt of which bronze would win her queen's flights. Even during the flights themselves, she could hear the other dragons' minds enough to influence them, encouraging the bronzes she desired and discouraging those she didn't. She wrote that there'd never been a rider with her talents who'd had cause for disappointment.”

F'ren couldn't quite see why that fact had interested Rahnis as much as it had. “Good for her, I suppose.”

“You don't get it?”

“Get what?”

“If Delene can learn to control her own talents better, Heggith will fly Linnebith _every single time she rises_. And, Malia left some training notes as well. I don't think Maenida and Sh'vek withheld them from Delene – they were barely legible, and buried in amongst some truly tedious accounting records – but regardless of what _I_ think of her, and whatever happens after the queens rise, surely she deserves to make the most of her talents? It might even make her more considerate of the needs of the other dragons of the Weyr.”

He admired her optimism. But even if she was wrong, it probably wouldn't hurt. “How would you do it? If you show her the records, you can't imagine she'd keep that quiet.”

Rahnis shrugged. “I wouldn't expect her to. I filed the training-script in with some ancient clutch records. If she _does_ learn enough, it'll be an absolute pleasure to make sure that Sh'vek's aware of the consequences, believe me.”

Judging by the look of hate in her eyes, F'ren didn't doubt it for a moment. “Shells, he might even transfer her after all!”

Rahnis grinned at him. “You think it's worth a try?”

F'ren smiled back. “Absolutely.”

 

 

 

The ninth day after Turnover dawned cold and clear. By mid morning, with the exception of the water-bucket still frozen fast to Broken Hold's entrance, they'd packed up everything they'd used to furnish the Hold. Rahnis had grown quieter and more introverted as the day had approached, her expression often wistful with thoughts of her weyrmate. Just as she'd planned from the start, she'd elected to wait until the same time of day before attempting to call M'ton and Narnoth forwards in time. F'ren couldn't see that it made all that much difference, but if it made her more confident of success, that was well and good. He'd been avoiding the subject as often as he could over the past few days – as much as he wanted to, he simply couldn't share the weyrwoman's confidence. He'd believe it possible when he saw it for himself; until then, he served her best by keeping silent.

 _Does she have any doubts, do you think?_ he asked Trath as the chosen moment drew closer. Rahnis was making her way towards the same open sunlit patch of ground they'd used the day M'ton and Narnoth vanished, sextant in hand.

_None that I feel. She cannot permit doubt. She knows she cannot._

F'ren swallowed. _We should believe, too. Tell her...._ He still hadn't the faintest idea what would happen _after_ M'ton and Narnoth came back, if they did. _Tell her 'good luck', and say she should pass it on to M'ton and Narnoth when they get here, because_ we're _not going to make things any easier for them._

_I have. She thanks you for it, F'ren, but asks that you not distract her now with words. Our strength will be enough._

Stroking one of Trath's headknobs, he watched as she mounted up and settled herself astride Alaireth's neck. On Ista Island, it would be mid-morning: the time had come. Alaireth leapt into the sky, and F'ren closed his eyes, feeling Trath lending the support of their shared wills to the queen. Alaireth's determination, and that of her rider, pulled heavily at them, aching with Rahnis' love for M'ton. It felt almost voyeuristic, but Trath held him firm against pulling away.

_Wait. Listen._

There was nothing at all to be heard, but F'ren _felt_ the echo nonetheless, cold and deep and full of impossible yearnings. Behind it, the sense of a light he couldn't quite see, a warm silence that, if he was forced to describe, he could only liken to the sleep of an unborn, unImpressed dragon. In another part of his mind, he could feel a mirrored shadow of himself, too – here in this same valley, all those months ago.

With his eyes closed, it was Trath's sight that showed him Rahnis stretching her arms up towards the sky. The silence of the valley was abruptly interrupted by the squawking of the last few resident wherries, startled from their roosts. In his mind's eye he could almost see them: a silhouetted afterimage of M'ton and Narnoth, dark against the midday sun. Beneath them, the familiar lines of the valleys and, superimposed on that, layer upon layer of shadowed darkness, rippling strangely, almost like an ocean. The darkness pulled at him as hard as Alaireth pulled on _it_ , and he squeezed his eyes tightly closed against the rising weight of it, and the inevitable tide of grief it was drawing from the weyrwoman's heart.

She'd truly believed this would work.

And it wasn't going to.

_DON'T THINK THAT, PLEASE DON'T THINK IT!_

Shocked by the voice of the queen in his mind, F'ren opened his eyes in time to see Alaireth passing overhead. Rahnis' face was an image of sheer anguish as she called out to him.

“Alaireth and I, we're alive _twice,_ and we're too far away. I need to be in Ista, not here!”

Of course. F'ren cursed himself for not having thought of it – though Rahnis had done no better herself – and hauled himself up onto Trath's neck. There _were_ two Alaireths in this moment, and the one who'd called Narnoth forwards wasn't the nearest to the _where_ where he'd vanished. Would it work at all, to call him twice?

_Alaireth says not to follow. We need to stay, to know that they're already there._

_No!_

_They go to Ista's midnight, low tide. I can sense them there, then and throughout the morning. Go, Alaireth! Quickly! GO!_

_They have time, don't they?_

Trath waited for Alaireth to vanish into _between_ before answering, his mental voice as quiet as F'ren had ever heard. _If they'd stayed too long, they risked knowing of their own failure before they'd even tried. I could not show her this, not if they were to have any chance at all._

The dragon supplied an image of a solitary gold dragon, skimming the water's surface, alone. And then, keening for her mate's death once again, for the third and final time.

F'ren nodded silently, and slumped back against Trath's last neckridge as the dragon added his own voice in sympathy. There was no chance at all that M'ton and Narnoth would ever come back alive now.

 

 

 

**END OF PART 2**


	21. Chapter 21

_Arise, awake, and greet the sun_   
_And start the morning well_   
_Begin your chores with lightened hearts_   
_the day is new, the night is past._   
_Soon too the work that early starts_   
_with friendly, cheering song._

 

**Morning, 9.1.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

   
In the dim light of their shared weyr, Sh'vek watched over Maenida as she slept. She'd always been an early riser, usually waking well before dawn to oversee the start of the day's work in the Lower Caverns. Sh'vek himself would rouse from his sleep to the pungent odour of over-strong klah and fresh breadrolls, the sight of the calm motions of his weyrmate as she busied herself around the weyr, and the sound of her mellow voice as she shared whatever idle gossip she thought might interest him.

Now, a full hour past a late winter dawn, Maenida just lay there, wan and still. She'd stay that way for however much longer the fellis kept her unconscious. It would probably be well after noon before she even started to stir, moaning and shifting uncomfortably on the bed...and, if the last time she'd had a relapse was anything to go by, probably confused and in pain. Tarkan would be back here again by then, and with Delene's help with Kiath the three of them would feed and clean her like a child, then decide on how little fellis they could get away with giving her to see her through the rest of the day.

_Sh'vek?_

The Weyrleader closed his eyes in regret. Kiath's voice in his head sounded _so_ much like Maenida's own, the way she used to be before the whole fardling nightmare had begun. He tried to remember the last conversation he'd had with her – the last _proper_ conversation, not the angry, incoherent mumbling or frightened, tearful apologies that were the best she managed now. The best she _had_ managed, rather. Sh'vek reckoned that even that would be well beyond her right now, and for some time to come, along with everything else it took to be a Weyrwoman. He rose from his perch on the edge of the bed and went to see what the queen needed of him. The action of leaving the weyr was enough to jog his memory of Maenida's last morning at full health. She'd been prepping her flamethrower ready for Threadfall, talking with Hendra about something or other. He'd come out of their weyr, freshly shaved and with a small nick he hadn't noticed, and she'd smiled sweetly at him and sent him straight back in for willowsalic and another mug of klah, and an order to change his shirt. She'd always noticed the smaller details, Maenida had.

He found Kiath out on the ledge, and gave her a firm pat on the nearest foreleg in greeting. “I'm glad you slept well, Kiath. Maenida's still deep asleep. We're doing all we can for her.”

_I know. She dreams of you. It feels like a memory._

“A good one, I hope.” He ran his hands up the queen's leg, feeling the texture of her hide for rough spots or any sign of stiffness in the underlying musculature. She shifted and, sensing her permission, Sh'vek placed a foot on the dragon's leg and stretched up to continue his checks at the juncture of wing and back. Kiath was losing condition from the lack of exercise, but he didn't dare take her flying far from the Weyr. She hadn't been eating well, either. He couldn't blame her for the loss of appetite, but a dragon needed more from her food than merely the energy it gave her to fly and fight. A man might need a varied diet to stay healthy, but a dragon needed to eat more regularly and in greater quantities than Kiath was doing. He slid down to the ground again, and looked across the ledge at Ormaith.

_See if you can't encourage her to eat something, Ormaith, and make sure she doesn't leave the bones this time. I know she prefers the herdbeasts, but a wherry would be best._

Reluctantly, Kiath pushed herself to her feet. Sh'vek watched her carefully as she crouched, then sprang. She was still agile and fast in the air, but he'd set her some simple exercises with R'fint, later.

Ormaith looked at him questioningly. _Why bother?_

 _She doesn't deserve this_ hideous _decline_. His eyes slid across the bowl, towards the empty ledges of the other queens' weyrs. Alaireth was still at Ista; Linnebith dozing inside on her couch. No-one ever got what they deserved, he thought to himself bitterly. Delene didn't deserve the Weyr, and the Weyr deserved better than Delene, in spite of what he'd been forced to tell everyone earlier. She'd accepted his warnings meekly enough, and had promised him she'd make the whole Weyr proud of her...but as sincere as she'd been at the time, Sh'vek was under no illusion that it would last. Threatening her with a transfer might goad her into improving her performance for a little while, but the empty flattery of the Weyr's bronzeriders would soon erode the few worthwhile attributes the girl had. The pride she claimed to want to earn would be abandoned in favour of whatever she could find in her own mirror. Damn the girl for picking _that_ moment for her eavesdropping!

 _Linnebith never rises before the spring equinox,_ Ormaith said. _We've plenty of time to set the Weyr to rights yet._

 _And plenty of time for her and the rest of them to undermine our work every step of the way. Months of uncertainty for the Weyr. We don't need it, Ormaith._ Sh'vek paced over to his dragon, and began a more thorough check of his dragon's hide than his rather perfunctory work on Kiath. Four decades of flying together had taught him never to be lax with a chore like this, even for a well-grown dragon like Ormaith. Dragons might find it easy to ignore the cold of a northern winter, but the dry, freezing air still took its toll out of their hide, as badly as _between_ ever did. Wings were one of the worst areas. He'd seen more than a few dragon pairs of their age – and some younger ones – suddenly develop an awkward tear out of what should have been only a minor scoring, and the resulting complications frequently grounded a dragon for months, if they weren't immediately fatal. Managing a Weyr was similar in many respects; any rough patches needed to be smoothed out fast, before the cracks developed and people and dragons started to die. Turns of experience told him where those rough spots could be found: the flexible joints and creases where sweat and dirt could gather; the wing membrane beside the batten ribs and running out to the forestay tip, always prone to over-stretching; the softer spots of the lower belly; and anywhere that a poorly maintained or badly-fitting harness could chafe the skin.

 _And who is what?_ Ormaith mused, picking up on the bent of his rider's thoughts.

 _Delene's the harness_ , Sh'vek thought back instantly. _Gaudy and well-tooled, the envy of all when it's hanging on a peg somewhere, but about as useful as firelizard in fall as soon as you try using it for the purpose it was made for. Who'd have thought a queenrider who could hear other dragons could ever cause so many problems?_ It wasn't that the girl had been poorly trained – she'd had the same lessons as every other rider in the Weyr, and more of them to fit her station in life besides. But somehow, somewhere, they'd all come unstuck. It ought to have been obvious long before now.

 _She was never really_ pushed, _was she?_

Sh'vek considered the problem. _No. No, we kept her far too comfortable, treated her like she was special, tried to let her flower in her own time. Maenida said she would... and I've no idea how much she was covering up for Delene's failings, even back then._

_And now?_

_I think she's a lost cause, frankly. If she were to stay junior we might have half a chance of knocking some sense into her, but there's only so far we can push her without turning her against us too._

There was a small dry spot behind Ormaith's elbow, no larger than Sh'vek's thumbnail. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he fished out the tiny jar of grease that he always carried and dipped his fingertips into it one by one. It was always best to deal with problems while they were still small enough to be easily managed. Sh'vek massaged the emollient in, spreading it over a full handspan of Ormaith's hide. _There_. _That feel better?_

_I think so._

Sh'vek moved his hands higher, and his dragon obligingly extended the wing backwards so his rider could access the joints from the underside. Ormaith was in perfect shape, but Sh'vek smoothed another dab of grease into the underside of the dragon's fingerjoint all the same. Proper attention to his dragon's wings now would pay off over the turns ahead of them – he didn't want to see Ormaith go the way of L'sard's Zandeth.

The bronze grunted. _Well,_ that _won't happen!_

_You won't be the strongest bronze in the Weyr forever, oh dragon-of-mine. And you've never been the fastest._

_Pah. If speed was all it took, you'd have blueriders as Weyrleaders._

“Ha!” _Think you have it in you to outfly the lot of them, still? For a queen other than Kiath?_

 _Doubts, Sh'vek? This Weyr is_ ours. _We know how they fly, how they think and react, every last one of them. As for our Weyr's next queen, well, we've both studied her flight carefully._ She _won't give me any surprises._

Moving down towards the spar joint, Sh'vek nodded. Speed, strength, stamina and cunning were what a Weyrleader's dragon needed, and only a relatively small handful of dragons came close to matching Ormaith in those things. Telemath and Trath were the obvious dangers. Hieth might have been another, had he not been handicapped by his rider's utter lack of interest in women. Of the remaining Wingleaders and Seconds, M'gan's Baxuth, H'rack's Simpeth and T'frick's Goth were the ones that required most watching. T'frick was still smarting from having missed his chance at being made Wingleader of Deluge. Well, if things went the way Sh'vek intended, there'd be at least one Wingleader getting demoted or transferred by then, and T'frick could have his chance to prove himself. Give the man a Wing and his Weyrleader's confidence, and that ought to keep him busy and assuage the worst of his ambition. Simpeth was also young, fast and hungry – but with H'rack as one of Snowfall's wingseconds, Sh'vek could quite happily leave that problem to F'ren to manage for him – just as H'rack was doing part of the work of grinding down F'ren and Trath. He smiled to himself in pleasure at the thought. Baxuth, though... _that_ bronze had hatched with more charisma than a dragon had any right to possess, and as predictable as he was in the air, you could never overlook a queen's own desires.

 _Alaireth is indulgent towards him, like Kiath is, but Linnebith prefers Telemath to Baxuth_ , Ormaith reminded him. _And you've discounted Heggith completely. We've not flown against Heggith in turns._

 _You think the Weyr will want G'dil as Weyrleader any better than Delene as Weyrwoman?_ He slapped the bronze on the thigh. _No. We'll have them all outmanoeuvred before they've even left the ground. As always._

Turning from his dragon, Sh'vek surveyed the Weyr. The air above it was relatively quiet – a nasty double fall was due the day after tomorrow, threatening land from Nabol to the vineyards of Sattle Hold over the course of the morning, and skirting the northern coast from Lewis to Balen as the sun went down. That pattern of falls was one of the heaviest the Weyr could face, and most dragons and riders were taking the opportunity to rest up around their daily drills. The upper ledges on the north side of the Weyr were well occupied with sunning dragons, and so too any flattish spot on the ridge big enough to accommodate a dragon. The Watchdragon had so much company it was a wonder he could do his job properly at all. The Lake and the feeding grounds were also fairly crowded, more so than he'd have expected on a winter day like this. Usually, most riders who could spare the time took their dragons somewhere warmer to bathe or hunt, but he _had_ given the Weyr a lot to talk about. Even at a distance, Sh'vek could see more gossiping than swimming going on.

Kiath finished her meal as he watched, and sprang into the air for the short flight to the lake. _Did she eat well?_ he asked Ormaith.

_Just the one wherry, but she ate all of it as we ordered. She will drink now, then return here to sleep._

_Good._ Sh'vek made another check of the Weyr's ledges, picking out the dragons of G'dil's Wing where he could. Thunderclap ought to have been readying themselves for their drill by now. He found Heggith up by the starstones and a half dozen other dragons from the Wing dotted in various spots along the ridge, but most of Thunderclap's dragons were sound asleep in their weyrs. High above the queens' weyrs, Y'mig's Klewth was dozing on his ledge beside one of Thunderclap's greens, but of the other wingsecond there was no sign at all. _Where's P'lindis got to, Ormaith?_ He felt the dragon reach out for the mind of the other bronze, and instinctively swung his eyes southwards in the vague direction of Igen Weyr. _As far as that?_

_Yes._

_P'lindis having problems with his joints again, I suppose?_ If this kept up, he'd have to see about retiring them there. _Call them back. I think it's time I spoke to G'dil about his Wing._

Sh'vek descended the steps to the Weyrbowl, and moved swiftly past the Hatching Cavern towards the other queens' weyrs. G'dil would be with Delene, he was certain of it. Sure enough, at the far end of Linnebith's couch he passed the telltale sign of several pairs of discarded men's boots. A predictable enough development, and he could probably make a very good guess as to whose they were.

Inside the weyr he heard a man chuckle, echoed by Delene's own tittering, followed by G'dil's voice raised in complaint. Sh'vek pushed the curtains aside, and took in the scene as he waited to be noticed. H'rack was the man who'd been laughing, he guessed – the man had still been grinning like a deadglow when Sh'vek had entered the weyr, though he'd stopped quickly enough after that. Delene was sat beside her large mirror, braiding her hair in a slightly more intricate fashion than usual. Beside her, F'ren was perched on the edge of the dresser, looking more than slightly hungover. He held one jewelled pin in his hand and three more poking out of his mouth, all of which matched the others already decorating the weyrwoman's head. The bronzerider gave him a lazy salute, and passed the pin in his hand across to Delene.

G'dil, seated at the table with a large flagon of ale, did _not_ look amused. Nor was he wearing any trousers. Sh'vek raised an eyebrow at him, and the man grimaced.

“Problem with the score?” Sh'vek asked.

Over at the dresser, Delene gasped in surprise and dropped her pin. “Weyrleader! Look what you made me _do_. Now I'll have to start all over again.”

G'dil's grimace deepened. “No you don't. Just get it done, Leney.”

“Don't hurry on my account, Delene,” Sh'vek said. “I came to see G'dil.” If nothing else, letting the girl waste her time prettifying her own hair would keep her out of _his_. He turned back to G'dil. “You were saying?”

The bronzerider scooped up his discarded trousers and stuffed his legs back into them, wincing as the fabric brushed past the bandaged score on his upper thigh. “It's not that deep.”

“Who'd have thought Thread could come so close to such a _tiny_ target, eh?,” H'rack said, and chuckled again. “Lucky for you Heggith was banking at the time.”

“Is it supposed to be _funnier_ the second time? Because I'm still not laughing.” He took a quick swallow from his ale. “Got better things to do than joke around. As do you two.”

“But G'dil, how better to spend our time than in the company of weyrwoman Delene?” F'ren murmured.

“You made your apologies, _and_ your extravagant gesture. What more do you want?” He gave Sh'vek an appealing look. “The Wing needs a proper rest after yesterday. Can't we postpone the drill until later?”

Just as he'd expected, G'dil obviously wasn't keen on Delene's increased popularity. Sh'vek shook his head. “Get them assembled in the bowl, G'dil. I'll see you outside soon.” He sat down in the chair the man had been using and watched him leave. When he turned back again, Delene was setting the last pin into place in amongst a final coil of hair. The whole effect _was_ rather beautiful, he had to admit. “Very pretty, Delene.”

She spun around on her chair, and gave him a broad smile. “H'rack chose them – didn't you, H'rack?”

“Anything I picked would have looked good on you.”

“I wish you'd told me that earlier,” F'ren muttered.

“Expensive, were they?” Sh'vek wondered how the man could afford such extravagance after all the fines Snowfall had accrued recently. On her chair, Delene was still simpering. What would she look like in another month's time? Bedecked in every frippery Pern could supply, no doubt, her weyr stuffed with a Gather's worth of luxuries and a full fair of firelizards looking to her, flitting around and getting in everyone's way. But perhaps all the attention _wouldn't_ be such a bad thing. Let the bronzeriders keep her busy, and she'd have less time to cause problems _elsewhere_ in the Weyr. He cleared his throat, and tried not to let his amusement show. “Why don't you show them to your family later, Delene? I'll need you and Linnebith to keep an ear open for Kiath for the next few hours, but F'ren can escort you to Nabol this afternoon.”

“Can I?” F'ren didn't bother to hide his surprise.

“I don't see why not.”

“Snowfall needs to drill. Badly.”

“Snowfall _always_ drills badly.”

“Less than we did, Weyrleader. You'd be surprised.”

“Then they can show _me_ what they're capable of while you and Delene enjoy Nabol's hospitality. Isn't that right, H'rack.”

“Of course, sir!”

“Then that's settled,” Sh'vek said, rising from his chair. “We'll discuss Snowfall this evening, F'ren.”

F'ren folded his arms and looked away. “Oh, I'll look forward to it, sir.”

 

 

 

Back on Kiath's ledge, Sh'vek took his time settling Ormaith's straps into their proper place. Down in the Weyrbowl, the dragons and riders of Thunderclap Wing were still struggling to get themselves in order.

 _You shouldn't let him get away with insolent remarks like that,_ the dragon muttered, still disgruntled by the snide tone of F'ren's parting words.

 _It serves my purpose._ Sh'vek threaded the martingale through the loop on the neck-strap, and buckled it securely. In his mind, he pictured a watch wher, leashed and choke-chained to some generic hold wall. They were territorial beasts, fierce in guarding their own ground, but only as far as their bonds and weak vision would stretch. Keep a wher in the same place for long enough, and eventually you could dispense with the chains. _F'ren can pretend otherwise all he wants, but he's just as leashed as any wher._ Sh'vek slid the fleece insulating baffle around the buckle and slapped Ormaith on the neck before mounting.

 _There. We're set. Tell Heggith to join us above the starstones, and find out where the worst of the coastal weather is today._ The north coast fall was going to be particularly tough, and he wanted them well prepared.

Coasting through the air while they waited for Thunderclap, Ormaith relayed the word from the other Weyrs. The report from Benden's watchdragon sounded most useful for his purposes: a series of winter storms were in the process of boiling up along the east coast, where Benden met Nerat. They'd have half an hour before sunset, the time difference matching perfectly with the north coast fall in two days' time. It would be unfamiliar territory for Thunderclap Wing, too: all the better to test them with.

G'dil's Heggith had agreed to the destination with clear reluctance, Ormaith informed him while they passed through _between._ They emerged high above Greystones Hold ten minutes' flight time from the weather front, but the air was turbulent enough that they plunged a good dragonlength or more before Ormaith's wings found the measure of the surrounding airflow. Thunderclap Wing followed them a minute or so later, but one of the browns immediately cried out in pain and blinked away again; back to the Weyr, Sh'vek presumed. _Who was that?_

_Lanth. His left wing is badly wrenched._

A typical weyrling error, from a pair who probably shouldn't have graduated as early as they had done. Sh'vek made a mental note to have a good talk with R'fint later, too. He didn't want to rush the _next_ weyrling class into the fighting wings as fast as the last group had been – but the warmer weather and harsher threadfalls of spring would only give him so much leeway. He'd give them another couple of months at most, and if the weyrlings weren't ready by then, R'fint would have to live with the consequences. _Tell them to head northwards up the coast a way before beginning their drills as soon as they're ready._

 _Heggith asks if there's anything particular we wanted to observe,_ Ormaith informed him a few minutes later. It had taken that long for Thunderclap to settle, and for Lanth's replacement to take his position in the Wing.

_Let them linger like that a while longer. I'd like to see how well they can hold their positions as we cross the inlet, and past the cliffs._

Not well, it turned out. Sh'vek sighed. _Have Heggith take them back south again and quarter the sky above the estuary. Then we'll work them through a full set of tests: start with individual sprints, close-crossing passes, and then our planned formation for tomorrow._

_Static, or..._

_Ascending, I think. We'll save static for later._

Sh'vek watched the drilling dragons and riders attentively. The Wing managed the easier drills well enough; he made mental notes on a few specific pairs, but was more concerned with matching the performance of the Wing with Ormaith's own memory of the air currents in the area. There were several patches of 'rotten' air, and although G'dil was careful not to let the cliffs catch his Wing out again, some of the other tricky areas seemed to come as a surprise each time the Wing's dragons passed through them. Once the ascending formation work was done, Sh'vek moved them on to his favourite _between_ ing drill: Ormaith randomly calling on dragons to skip ahead a few wingbeats while the rest of the Wing held a static formation in the worst location he could find. After that, there was a brief lull while the dragons stoked their flames, then the standard set of flame-drills. The cloud was rolling in fast by then; Sh'vek elected to finish with a flaming descent through the cloud layer.

He took Ormaith down to the cliffs to await Thunderclap's arrival. The bronze found a high rocky outcrop to perch on, and hunkered down with his wings tightly closed against the wind. This close to Greystones Hold, the surrounding land was well-farmed. Grazing herdbeasts cropped at the grasses on the steeper ground, while the flatter slopes were planted up with tubers and winter-greens. An extensive dark, scorched scar on the southern slope marked an old Thread-burrow that someone had been slow to extinguish. Sapped of all its nutrients, they'd get little of value from that part of the field for several turns to come.

A yellowish glow in the clouds overhead pulled Sh'vek's attention back to the sky. Thunderclap Wing descended at speed, emerging from the base of the clouds in a rather more haphazard fashion than a good Wing should. The left flank was late, several pairs had got turned around by some amount or other – Oelath was practically flying backwards – and a handful of others were well out of place. It was all much as he'd expected by then. Thunderclap Wing had some clear deficiencies, and several pairs _really_ didn't have a good feel for their own airspace. Communication between G'dil and his wingsecond P'lindis was obviously lacking, which was particularly troubling. P'lindis had charge of the left flank of the Wing in most formations, along with all the recent weyrlings and the other dragons who'd flown with Snowfall under Ev'les before being shifted to Thunderclap. It was lazy Wing management on G'dil's part – P'lindis was experienced and could certainly cope with what he had, but how well would G'dil learn their capabilities if he didn't mesh the Wing together properly? Inselth in particular didn't seem to have settled into her new Wing, and blue Pyjoth was so poorly placed that the young dragon was lucky not to have been overflown even after a short drill. Elsewhere in the Wing there were even more problems. Zelayne and Erabelth had performed adequately today, but their position next to their weyrmates had been obviously detrimental to the Wing during threadfall yesterday, and he wondered why G'dil hadn't done anything about that. He asked Ormaith to find out.

_Heggith says she's useless anywhere else when thread is falling._

Sh'vek frowned, and marked her down for Snowfall. _And what do Heggith and G'dil say about the rest of their Wing's problems?_

Ormaith was silent for some time. _He says they're tired and need more rest. I showed him what we saw, as we saw it, but_ they _do not see the same things we did._

 _Faranth, have they learned_ nothing _since we gave them that Wing?_ There were a few pairs he could bring in that might strengthen the Wing a little, but by the First Egg, he wasn't going to entrust G'dil with any Weyrlings for the foreseeable future! _Send them home_.

 _We shouldn't trust him with a Wing at all,_ Ormaith thought with scorn, as soon as Thunderclap had vanished _between_. _His mind is elsewhere too often._

_Delene. It all comes back to her, doesn't it?_

The bronze sprang back into the air. _She interfered with the Wing too much yesterday, too. The bad instructions they received from her and Linnebith are lingering in their minds. She pushed them to faster flight and stronger flame, less caution and less accounting for each other. They watch for Heggith, but not for each other._

Sh'vek closed his eyes, and visualised the Weyr. He could still ask Alaireth to continue supporting the Wings, but Delene would undoubtedly cause trouble if he did, and insist on flying both of tomorrow's falls. Short of leaving all three queens back at the Weyr, he wasn't sure _what_ he could do.

 _Later_ , Ormaith thought. _You'll think of something_.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up for the readers: following early comments, I've made some minor edits since posting this chapter. H'koll's options towards the end of the first scene have been expanded on, and R'fint's position at the end of the chapter has hopefully been clarified a little. See comments on this chapter for more details, and give me a yell if you spot anything that still needs fixing.

_Fly with pride and flame with honour_  
 _Sear the skies as you've been trained_  
 _Watch the air and warn your wingmates_  
 _Bring your dragon home again._

_Fly with pride and flame with honour_  
 _Join the Wings in thread-filled air_  
 _Man and dragon, now and ever_  
 _Leave the weyrling table bare_

**Late afternoon, 11.1.35**

**Threadfall over Nabol**

   
Shielding his eyes from the low, westering sun, H'koll squinted at the tumbling mass of thread. Singed by char, it was writhing as it fell – not the easiest of targets even for an experienced dragon like Ruarnoth, but young N'tar wasn't going to be put off easily at this stage. Orders were orders, but shard it, why couldn't R'fint have taken this pair up for their blooding? Or better yet, left it for another day entirely?

_Earith doesn't like it either, but they had orders, too._

_Really, Ru?_

_So he says._ Ruarnoth huffed out a sigh, and filled her lungs in readiness. Small adjustments to her wings carried her northwards of bronze Cortanth. H'koll could sense her continued litany of instructions and encouragement directed at the weyrling pair: to steady their approach, flame from the top down, not to force the flame too strongly, to watch for the char afterwards. He could also sense quite clearly that neither Cortanth nor N'tar were listening to a word of what she was saying.

 _Steady! Steady!_ Ruarnoth repeated in vain. _Cortanth is over-confident, and N'tar resentful of being held back by a mere green,_ she told H'koll more privately. _They won't flame as we instructed._

_I know, darling._

H'koll tried not to tense up too much. He'd half been expecting this type of behaviour from this particular pair. N'tar and his dragon had performed well in their training ever since the bronze had hatched. They weren't the best of the clutch by far – that honour went to one of the girls riding green, and Faranth knew she'd never get the credit she deserved for it – but N'tar seemed to think that riding bronze more than made up for his weaknesses. Worse, the arrogant idiot was likely to get away with it this time, at least as far as flaming the thread went.

A few more wingbeats would carry the dragon close enough to start flaming, but Cortanth opened his maw well ahead of the falling thread. Under N'tar's direction, the dragon swung his head in a broad arc, his wings beating strongly while his body twisted to power the pair into an upwards spiral around their target. It was a dramatic piece of work indeed, showcasing the precision of the bronze dragon's flight and the length and breadth of his flame: the thread had been thoroughly reduced to char – probably several times over – by the time Cortanth banked free of the fluttering black specks of ash and circled back round towards Ruarnoth again. H'koll had felt the heat of the weyrling pair's flames on the exposed parts of his face from a good half dozen lengths away.

N'tar was crowing with delight. “Let's see your green do that, Sir!” he yelled mockingly as Cortanth looped over the top of Ruarnoth, and executed a pointlessly risky barrel-roll.

 _Did R'fint catch any of that?_ H'koll asked Ruarnoth.

 _Earith says they saw enough,_ she said. _He says to hammer the message home however we want. What message is that, H'koll?_

_They flew prettily around and flamed the whole thread... along with everything else within a dragonlength. Imagine all of that in the middle of a Wing._

_Oh. Oh!_

_Exactly._

H'koll signalled N'tar to hold station behind Ruarnoth, and mentally nudged the green to steady her pace to one that the larger dragon would find annoying. Acrobatic abilities in a bronze were fine for mating flights, but it was steady care that served them best on the upper levels, where thread fell thick and fast, especially when they were still growing into their adult size. The habits you learned in weyrlinghood could be hard to shake in the Turns ahead. H'koll instinctively tilted his head at the thought, to check the skies above them. The fighting Wings were oddly bunched in places; Linnebith and one of her two trios of assistants flew beneath G'dil's wing, while her other trio of dragons on mop-up duty were scattered back towards the fall's trailing edge. Alaireth had another trio of her own placed towards the leading edge, but the queen herself was absent, likely still dealing with that rescue of the scored brown from Flamestrike. Ruarnoth had gleefully reported back to him on all the bickering she'd overheard between the two queens: to think that he'd been hoping to have all three of them flying fall, barely more than a sevenday ago! And it'd only get worse as Linnebith got closer to her rising. However bad the relations got between the two queens, at least Kiath wouldn't be fighting today, or ever again from the sounds of things. R'fint said she was sleeping off a large meal, while the Weyrwoman had been even more heavily drugged than usual.

_Ask Linnebith if there are any pairs of stray threads around for us, and if there aren't, if she can have one of the Wings let some through for us._

Slightly reluctantly, Ruarnoth reached for the queen's mind. Fortunately, Delene had been well enough occupied with her flamethrower to leave the answer to her dragon.

 _Linnebith says to head for the trailing edge,_ Ruarnoth said _. Skyfrost will provide thread for us. And Porluth guarantees three lengths of clear air off her left Wing._

H'koll nodded his agreement to his dragon's visual of green Porluth, the long greyish line of a slowly-healing score two thirds of the way down her neck. _That'll do. Share it with Cortanth, and we'll go on my mar- fardling impatient... follow him!_

Ruarnoth had to beat her wings furiously to join up with the weyrling pair when they re-emerged; N'tar and Cortanth had almost extended their lead enough to justify a second hop _between_ to catch them. H'koll was fuming. “Like fighting thread alone, do you?” he yelled as they came alongside. He had half a mind to send them back to the Weyrling Wing then and there – or better still, the Weyr – but there was a lesson the youngsters still needed to learn, first. One of many, at this rate.

N'tar was stupid enough to answer back. “It's just a pair of threads!”

 _Cortanth says his rider says the last one was trickier than these,_ Ruarnoth passed on, _and that they've flamed worse in training._

 _Tell them they've flamed_ ropes _, Ru. Live thread's a different matter._

N'tar glanced across at him, his face scrunched into a scowl. “If it's that different,” the weyrling shouted, “why do we even bother?”

H'koll ground his teeth, hoping that R'fint would make a fine example of the young idiot in front of his peers, later. “So you don't all die the very first time you take to the skies,” he muttered to himself. “Left-hand thread is yours, N'tar,” he called across. “You choose the pace, but keep Cortanth _steady_ this time.”

N'tar shrugged, and nudged the bronze into a punishingly swift approach. It wasn't beyond Ruarnoth's ability to keep up, but it was hardly the type of attack that a dragon could sustain for an entire fall.

 _If they flame like they did before..._ Ruarnoth thought to H'koll, genuinely concerned.

 _Trust me, they will,_ H'koll thought back. _And they'll get the scare they've been needing. Keep your flame tight, Ru, and get ready to show them what threadfighting is really all about._

As H'koll had expected, the bronze attacked the thread low and fast again. He could guess who the lad had picked up _that_ idea from; a shame the supposedly more efficient manoeuvre was spoilt by Cortanth's waste of flame. Ruarnoth, meanwhile, was occupied with flaming her own thread. A single focused belch of flame was ample to the task; Ruarnoth backwinged to let the last few handspans disintegrate into ashes ahead of her, just as a very much still flaming Cortanth arced towards her. Ruarnoth had already lost enough forwards momentum to turn on her tail-tip and evade the reach of the bronze dragon's flame; Cortanth, however, was in full flight, and shrieked in pain as he and his rider received faces full of Ruarnoth's char. They vanished _between_ in shock, and for a few moments H'koll's blood ran cold, in fear that they'd failed to visualise as they jumped, but soon enough a very chagrined weyrling pair re-appeared off Ruarnoth's Wing. H'koll gave them a good glare. “Thought it was live thread that hit you, eh?”

N'tar didn't answer.

“Next time, leave enough time and space for your wingmates to do their flaming, too,” H'koll bellowed at him. “Thread's your enemy, not the dragons flying beside you, but that belly full of flame can kill them just as fast. And you need to make it _last.” Remind Cortanth of all the close calls the weyrlings have already had just getting stone to the fighting wings, and that Thread-char doesn't fall as fast as burnt ropes,_ H'koll asked his green. “Shells, weyrling enthusiasm is fine, but you're not ready for the Fighting Wings yet! Are you?”

The lad rubbed a reddish smear of ash and blood from his face. “No, sir.”

Good. The pair had had a true blooding indeed, but better by far that they learned from their mistakes now, rather than making them again and again in the midst of the fighting Wings. H'koll signalled N'tar his dismissal. _Tell them to head back to the Weyrling Wing, and to wait for word from Linnebith. We'll ask her to see them safely back to the Nabol groundcrews tracking the trailing edge. N'tar can spend Cortanth's flame assisting them on the ground. Remind them to_ try _not to spook the runnerbeasts!_

H'koll eased back against Ruarnoth's last neckridge as the Weyrling blinked away, and sighed. _Report all that back to Earith as well, would you darling?_ One weyrling pair down, only another dozen or so to go over the next couple of months. He scanned the upper levels once again while the green made her report. Some of the bunching had eased; it looked like C'nir had shifted Cloudburst's formation mid-fall. That made three different patterns in the sky: Flamestrike's ascending vees were duplicated across five of the other Wings, Snowfall's vees were inverted and descending, while C'nir now led his dragons in a set of three layered lines – sorted by size and colour, wings beating in a rhythmic tempo that set different speeds for each row and gave good coverage of the sky. It was popular with some of the greens and blues in particular, if only because it gave at least a few of them a little more responsibility in Fall than they usually had. The Weyrleader was always quite scathing of that one. He wondered if that was why... no, like R'fint said, it was none of his business.

A bugle from green Porluth alerted him to another stray thread falling several dragonlengths off. Ruarnoth immediately dived to take it on, a small favour for the mop-up team before they returned to their weyrlings. That done, she shared a visual from B'risten's Janguath.

 _Janguath calls me back. The upper Wings need more stone, but Earith is still busy with Sellelth._ Ruarnoth continued talking as they jumped _between_. _Sellelth is slow to learn, even for a brown. As we are done with Cortanth, we are to take charge of the weyrlings, while Janguath goes with Adth, Frayroth, Hyzanth and Chelkath to the upper levels._

They came out into the full glare of the early evening sun a dragonlength above and to the side of Janguath. _That's a lot of work for them,_ H'koll thought as he quickly assessed the state of the weyrling wing. Some of them were noticeably tiring; hardly surprising when this was the second threadfall the Weyr had fought today.

_Janguath says it'll be fine. Linnebith will be watching them closely, too. It is good to have a queen watching._

_So everyone says, eh?_ He twisted around, and flexed his arm three times, the signal for a quick review of firestone supplies. Five weyrlings down to their last few sacks peeled away from the main body of the wing, and he asked Ruarnoth to send them back to the Weyr for more stone. The remainder ought to have enough stone to last the rest of the fall, if not the stamina – Lith was looking even weaker already. Blue Jinnith would be a good choice for the next resupply, he decided, if one was needed before Janguath returned. Or maybe...

H'koll's musings were interrupted by a sudden sad heaviness in Ruarnoth's mind, a foretaste of keened grieving to come.

 _Frayroth!_ she cried. _Frayroth is no more!_

He closed his eyes, and did what he could to soothe Ruarnoth's pain. Behind them, the weyrling wing was already falling into disarray, driven by the riders' shock as much as the dragons' reactions. The urge to grieve overwhelmed the instinctive need to fight thread for many of the weyrlings: well over half had started keening. Pushing on Ruarnoth as hard as he could bear, H'koll encouraged her to help them as well as she could until Earith returned – she was already calling to the weyrlingmaster's brown for assistance.

Dragons blinked into view around them: Earith and Sellelth, blue Hyzanth, then gold Alaireth. Order followed fast, and finally Ruarnoth informed him that Janguath had taken the traumatised Adth and Chelkath back to the Weyr – they'd witnessed Frayroth's threading far too closely for comfort, and that was all anyone needed to know.

After that, there was no question of the weyrlings doing anything other than ferrying firestone for the remainder of the fall. To keep their minds off their recent loss, B'risten started them on a set of aerial sack-tossing drills as soon as he returned from the Weyr. H'koll wished he'd thought of the idea. Several of the Wings were generous enough to send the dragons short on stone down to the level of the Weyrlings to resupply rather than calling a weyrling pair upwards, but it wasn't always an option: word from upper flight said that the prevailing winds were pushing large swathes of the northern parts of the fall back on themselves into unpredictably heavy patches. In those conditions, removing even a single dragon at a time from a fighting Wing was best avoided. The third time H'koll found himself accompanying a weyrling pair up to just beyond the dangerous border of the Fall, he decided enough was enough.

_Shard it, Ru, can't F'ass manage his Wing's stone any better than this? The fall's more than nine tenths fought! Ask Luth why he doesn't just send 'em home, replace them with some of his first shift? Safer by far for one of them to take on more stone at the Weyr, isn't it?_

Ruarnoth's mental tone was apologetic. _It's Luth himself who needs more stone. They'll be making a tight turn right on the fall's edge. He says to send the weyrling in fast._

H'koll glanced at the falling threads barely more than a dozen dragonlengths off, and swore. There weren't many weyrlings he'd trust with a resupply under those conditions. _You've flame still, Ru? Get Velsilth moving now, and follow her in tight. We'll cover what we can, but Sasseny'll need to make her own choice of when and where to skip._

He raised an arm and beckoned the weyrling pair on, pleased by the bravery behind their lack of hesitation as they accelerated towards Icestorm Wing's chosen turning-point. Ruarnoth wove and twisted behind them as Velsilth chose her safe path between the threads; up close, they were falling even thicker than H'koll had first thought. No wonder F'ass had specifically requested one of the green weyrlings this time round...though it might have been better not to call one up at all. Ruarnoth darted ahead to pick off a thread, and then they were flying parallel to Luth at last. H'koll missed the moment that Sasseny made her throw – a heavy clump just ahead of the young green held all of his attention, and shells, it had been too fardling long since he'd flown the upper levels in earnest, he was really losing his eye for it – but there they were, Sasseny smiling and waving as Velsilth banked away from the flames of one of Icestorm's browns... and then shrieking in fear at the Thread they hadn't seen against the setting sun's glare.

They were gone, blinked _between_ in the very moment that Ruarnoth sent her own mental scream of warning. Too late; in the brief touch that Ruarnoth had made before they'd vanished, she'd seen more than enough to know that Velsilth had jumped without a clear destination in mind. She creeled, her mind stretching into a desperate, futile search, while the thread that had threatened the weyrlings fell unimpeded.

Not for long it wouldn't, H'koll decided, encouraging Ruarnoth after it. _Let's kill it before we head back to Earith and the others._

Ruarnoth was in full agreement, eagerly burning it to ash while H'koll blinked away at the stinging in his eyes. Shard it, shard it! They might have been only a matter of sevendays away from fighting thread on the upper levels for real, but if ever there'd been a time when he should have sent a pair back and taken the risk on himself.... He could hardly bear the thought of returning without Velsilth and Sasseny; charring a single thread was scant vengeance for their lives... but what else could they do? The chill of _between_ was blessedly numbing. Of all the pairs to lose! The Weyr would keen for them as soon as Thread stopped falling, but why hadn't Ruarnoth heard the Weyrling Wing give voice to their grief?

Ruarnoth's mind opened up in delight as they re-emerged. _But H'koll, they live!_

_How?_

_Alaireth gave them a visual._

_She did? That must've been quick work._

_Earith has been asking_ her _to watch the weyrlings, ever since the other weyrwoman distracted Frayroth._

_What?_

Silently, Ruarnoth relayed her rider's question back to the weyrlingmaster's brown. _He says no questions now. He says we are to escort Velsilth back to the Weyr, with Lith and Endrabeth and Kazroth. He'll speak to us later, but we've done enough for now._

Sickened to learn of the cause of Frayroth's loss, H'koll didn't even think to wonder if Earith's last remark had been praise or reprimand until well after the fall had ended.

 

 

 

Humming the tune of one of the more catchy teaching songs softly to himself in a vain attempt to keep his mind from wandering, H'koll rooted through the crate of discarded fighting straps, looking for the most useful examples. Here was a set that had once belonged to a brown: the leather had been well-maintained and even now showed no signs of cracking, but the original stitching had been over-tight and had pulled large tears in the leather. It had been repaired several times over before the seamed pieces had finally started to give out, and he expected some keen weyrling would suggest cutting it down for a smaller dragon; the design stamped into the ridge-pieces was particularly well done. Unfortunately, the real danger in these particular straps came in the thickness of the leather itself. The thinner patches had been cunningly placed where they wouldn't cause problems for a dragon the size of a brown, but they'd never survive the stresses of the sharper turns made by a green or a blue. He unbuckled it, disentangled a twist in the link-piece, and put the straps back together again, before adding it to the pile that he'd be taking back with him to the teaching room.

How many more did he need? He already had enough pieces to demonstrate the different types of cracking caused by _between_ and poor maintenance. Then there were his own embarrassing weyrling straps which he'd thoroughly decorated to the point of uselessness, a couple more examples of shoddy stitching, and almost a dozen ruined beyond repair by stretch-damage. Very little of what he had so far could ever be used again on a dragon. Even with the Weyr's current drive for thrift, there were practical limits, and the weyrlings needed to learn to recognise them. Once he'd got them all to understand which straps could be salvaged and which to discard, he'd start them on cutting some of the less useful spares down into lengths and thicknesses suitable for trading south for sandal-straps, or for using as thongs, ties or more complex woven basketry or coops for layers – some might even get turned into snake-snares, though most tunnelsnakes would chew through any snare made of leather in short order.

What he was really after was some extensive thread-, flame- or char-damage. Those were rare indeed; for a dragon's straps to get hit that badly, the dragon wearing them usually suffered, too. Maybe he'd find some with the more recent discards? Faranth knew, the Weyr'd been going through straps fardling fast since the day of Kiath's accident.

H'koll walked back up towards the mouth of the storage cavern, to where the unsorted salvage bins were located for convenience. He opened up the nearest of them, and immediately understood why he'd been subconsciously avoiding it. There was R'mick's design on the dark leather he'd preferred. The other pieces on the surface were typical examples of leather which had been aged by wear and tear; he didn't recognise those, but they weren't any use to him, either. Another set close to the top had been sheared clean through by thread. He didn't recognise the designs on that one, but when he had the whole thing laid out on the long table, it was clear that a full arm's length of the right hand portion of the secondary-strap had been consumed. Ichor stains marred the remainder, which was otherwise in very good condition. It was a wonder that the dragon who'd worn them had survived long enough for them to be removed, but no rider would ever wish to re-use such an ill-omened set of straps. H'koll stuffed them back into the bin, along with the other worn discards. R'mick's straps, peppered by char-damage, would have to do.

Back in the weyrling barracks, H'koll set to work hanging his chosen straps from the long, taut rope that ran the length of the teaching room. He was half way through when he realised he could hear voices. Straightening up, he scratched at the stubble on his chin. It wasn't likely to be any of the weyrlings; they'd been given a couple of skins of wine and told to make the most of the journeyman Harper who was stopping the night at the Weyr between placements. One of the voices – the only one speaking right now, though he was sure there'd been another a few moments ago – sounded a lot like R'fint. H'koll had been studiously avoiding the Weyrlingmaster ever since the evening meal.

Booted footsteps resounded in the corridor outside, and the voice grew louder – the speaker was definitely R'fint. H'koll waited, listening, wondering if they'd come into the teaching room or not. But the footsteps soon stopped; they'd most likely halted beside the name-lists chalked onto the corridor's larger wall-slate. R'fint was reviewing the merits and failings of the senior weyrlings – again. It wasn't quite the same recital he'd given the Weyrleader yesterday morning; this time the Weyrlingmaster was putting less emphasis on the skills they'd acquired, and more on their personalities and potential, their weaknesses and character flaws. It was hard to believe that these young riders would tapped into the fighting Wings before the second month was out. R'fint had promised the Weyrleader they'd be ready by then, but H'koll had serious doubts about a lot of them.

Going by what he could overhear of the one-sided conversation outside – R'fint wasn't shy of mentioning the likely problems that certain weyrling pairs could cause the fighting Wings – the Weyrlingmaster shared some of those same doubts. Well, if R'fint couldn't convince Sh'vek to change his mind now, no one could. H'koll quickly finished the last of his preparations, then sat himself down on a stool with his feet propped against the wall to wait them out. R'fint was still talking, but if that _was_ the Weyrleader outside, he didn't fancy interrupting them, not twice in the space of two days.

Finally, R'fint came to the end of his alphabetical review. “And as for W'dorrow, he's a long way from brilliant. You saw that last turn, I'm sure. But, he knows his limits and is cautious where it counts. The worst of his flaws is his lack of confidence, and that'll improve as they gain in experience. Yangrith is steady, and they'd settle well into any of the Wings.”

“Highly unlikely _they_ 'll be coming Snowfall's way then.”

Well, well. So it was _F'ren_ out there, talking Wing placements with the Weyrlingmaster! That was early, if what B'risten had told him was true – apparently, the wingleaders usually left things much later than this before trying to influence who got who.

R'fint mumbled something too softly for H'koll to understand, then said more clearly, “So. What are your predictions?”

“That cocksure bronzerider for starters, and at least three of the browns. Inexperience where it'll cause the most trouble, and I'll have a harder time limiting them to a single shift. If we're lucky, he'll leave it at that, but I'm expecting to lose a good dozen pairs to the other Wings. Whichever of the greens and blues is most likely to struggle with the pace on the upper levels would be my next guess.”

“That's a lot of weyrlings coming in to one Wing.” R'fint didn't sound pleased by the idea.

F'ren's reply sounded deliberately unconvincing. “We had fewer than the other Wings last time round.”

“Ha. Don't tell _me_ you think you're being treated fairly. I suppose you expect me to do something about it?”

There was a long pause. F'ren's voice was cold, when he spoke again. “They're your weyrlings. Unless you _like_ abandoning responsibility for them the moment they lea-”

“Fah! Every rider under the age of thirty started out as one of my weyrlings.” R'fint let out a long sigh. “So. Adth, Kazroth, and Sellelth are the most likely browns. Tasana would cause some obvious problems to you, but her Fanreyth would be an asset. I'm genuinely not sure which way Sh'vek would lean with her. Lith is the weakest of the greens, physically; I'd say she's as much a guaranteed placing as Cortanth right now. And the brothers, T'nirrin and S'net.”

“The blueriders? They didn't sound _that_ bad....”

“Several eggs short of a clutch, the both of them. An _interval_ clutch.”

H'koll winced at the insult, which was damningly accurate.

“Oh, they know their training,” R'fint continued, “but they won't be half as flexible as you'll need if you want to turn the Wing around. Again. Which brings me back to my question. What do you expect _me_ to do about it? Lie to the Weyrleader? Hold back the weaker pairs?”

“Advise me.”

“Last time I offered you advice, you promised me you'd keep a low profile. _That_ went well.” The weyrlingmaster's voice was wry, and H'koll had to stifle a snort of amusement.

“I was thinking of resigning my knots. That low enough for you?”

H'koll straightened in surprise at F'ren's announcement, and his feet dropped from the wall onto the floor with a loud thump. F'ren might not have been acting himself recently, but he'd never, ever expected to hear him say something like that.

The door opened, and R'fint and F'ren entered the room. H'koll stood up. “Good evening, R'fint, F'ren.”

“I'd been wondering where you'd got to,” the Weyrlingmaster said.

“Wasn't sure if I should interrupt. Thought you had the Weyrleader out there again.”

R'fint rolled his eyes. “Hardly that.” Arms crossed, he looked back at F'ren. “So. You want more time to spend sniffing after Delene, do you?”

H'koll was fully expecting his friend to deny it, but F'ren smiled ever so slightly, and instead said, “You're an astute man. I'm not going to lie to you.”

Perhaps he _shouldn't_ have discounted off-hand those rumours about Delene's new gems. He frowned to himself, as several other things suddenly fell into place. _Someone_ had upset weyrwoman Rahnis several days ago, badly enough that she'd left the Weyr. And with Delene to be Weyrwoman... shells, he'd thought F'ren was smarter than that. Giving up his Wing wouldn't earn him any extra respect from the Weyrfolk, and it certainly wouldn't hide his ambition from the Weyrleader. He shared a disbelieving look with R'fint, and shook his head. “Don't be stupid, F'ren.”

R'fint lifted a hand and tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Step down, and you'll get every punishment watch going.”

“That, I can live with.” The bronzerider's face was more serious, now. “You know this burden better than any, Weyrlingmaster.”

R'fint's face had noticeably sobered, too. “If you're going to do it, do it soon. I swear by Earith's egg, if you _dare_ abandon that Wing after the assignments get made, that'll be the last thing you _ever_ do.”

“Leading them into fall could be just as fatal. For all of us.”

“You can say that about any Wing. Any Threadfall. Do as duty dictates, bring back as many living men and dragons as you can, and count the job well done.” The weyrlingmaster turned back towards H'koll, and scanned the room swiftly. “Another job well done, H'koll, but I don't like it when my own _assistants_ hide themselves away from me.” He gave a feral grin. “I think a practical demonstration would help. How many of those straps do you think you and Ruarnoth can break in-flight?”

H'koll sucked in his breath in dismay. “ _In-flight?_ ”

“Nothing wrong with _your_ ears,” R'fint said. “Yes, in-flight. You _may_ wish to skip breakfast.” He shared a laugh with F'ren. “After today... having them scared and amused in equal measures should be just about right." 

"Scared and amused, eh?" H'koll repeated. "At least I'm good for _something_."

R'fint gave him a long, thoughtful stare. "Don't let it haunt you too much, H'koll. Any one of us could have been caught out the same way, in a mess like today's fall. Yes, they'd have been safer if you'd chosen to pull them out, but only for today. Everyone finds themselves out of their depth like that at some point...and I can't say it's not better in the long run if it happens while they're still weyrlings, without the responsibilities of the fighting riders, and with time on their hands to come to terms with the realities of what they're up against. Better now than in their first months in the Wings. Besides, Sasseny said you reminded her that she needed to keep her own eyes open and skip as needed. They had a narrow escape, and they know it. Velsilth will soon forget it, but Sasseny will remember and learn from it. That's the best any of us can ask for: weyrlings that live, _and_ learn.”

“I'm not as sharp as I was, Sir. My reactions were lousy, Ru's too. Lucky that Alaireth was watching, and able to stitch them a new visual as well as she did. Never knew any dragon could react as fast as that, even a queen.” H'koll had been impressed. He'd hoped that Alaireth would share the trick with Ruarnoth, but the queen had firmly and rather aloofly refused.

R'fint drew his thin brows together into a frown. “You knew their visual was off?

“ _What_ visual? Ru touched Velsilth's mind just as they jumped. Too late for _us_ to do anything – we were both convinced they'd gone for good.”

The weyrlingmaster continued to study him intently. “Next time, stay in better contact, H'koll. Just be thankful _someone_ was paying attention. If Alaireth hadn't been listening out for them when she was...."

Standing against the wall directly behind the weyrlingmaster, F'ren mouthed R'fint's last few words silently, sharing them with his dragon judging by the vague look to his eyes.

“I'm mostly thankful that it wasn't Delene listening in.” H'koll wondered what F'ren would say to that, and if he'd come to the weyrwoman's defense at all.

F'ren didn't bite, but the remark had clearly rattled him. He pushed away from the wall and moved to the door. “Sorry, R'fint, H'koll – I'm needed elsewhere.” He gave the weyrlingmaster a respectful nod. “I appreciate the chat.”

R'fint responded in kind. “And I the warning, needed or not.” He waited for the bronzerider to leave, then turned his attention back to H'koll, and grimaced. “Delene! Sh'vek may be treading carefully around her, but I'll be damned if I will. Come along, H'koll. I don't think you want to miss this.”

 


	23. Chapter 23

_Bright his eyes, the blue that Searched me_   
_Whorled with sparkles like the sea_   
_Harper blue, I'll wear no longer_   
_Dragon blue's the blue for me._

_Bright his mind, the blue that found me_   
_Questing, hungry, wild and free_   
_Landbound vows can hold no longer_   
_Dragon blue's the blue for me._

_Bright his heart, the blue that bears me_   
_Through the skies beyond between_   
_When we wish to live no longer_   
_Dragon blue's the blue for me._   


**Early evening, 11.1.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

   
Half a dozen firelizards had attended Remelly throughout her drawn-out labour, humming and crooning encouragingly all the while. Now, just the one brown remained, perched anxiously beside the young woman's pillow. Half-fanning his wings, he chirruped in clear agitation.

Rahnis reached out to run a hand down the brown's spine, soothing his wings back into place. “Hush, little one. She's sleeping now. No need to worry.” She wondered how well the young firelizard could sense the lie in her voice. Hard to say, just looking at him; his eyes were whirling the same pale violet they'd been ever since she'd arrived an hour earlier. She stroked the brown's nearer eye ridge lightly with a finger, and he lidded both eyes shut. “There's a boy. You sleep too, and we'll watch you both.”

Remelly's breathing was shallower now, and her skin was pallid in the glowlight. If Thread hadn't fallen today, if someone had thought to call for a healer sooner, if there hadn't been seriously injured dragonriders for Tarkan and Tilga to attend to, and if Remelly had had siblings still living that the healers might have risked transfusing blood from.... If, if, if. There was only the one 'if' left, now: if she lasts the night... but it looked as though that 'if' would soon be answered just the same way as the others had been, as a might-have-been for a woman with more luck than Remelly.

Soft footsteps sounded from the hallway, and Rahnis turned in time to see Tilga returning, ushering one of the Weyr's older children into the room ahead of her in the direction of the bundles of soiled sheets and bedfurs.

“That's all of it. Run it down to the laundry, and if Shenla's not there, make sure you speak to Rayne, not Varral.” Tilga met Rahnis' eyes with a grimace. “The cloth'll want a long boil with plenty of soapsand, but it ought to be salvageable. The fleeces too, but they'll want soaking right away.”

Rahnis pushed herself up from her chair. “Are Rayne and Varral still having that dispute?” Egritte hadn't been idle over the days since Sh'vek's announcement. She'd rearranged the work groups, altered the pattern of shift rotations, and although her favoured friends seemed to be happy with the new arrangements they were very much in the minority. Some of the weyrfolk accepted the changes more readily than others, and new factions and resentments were growing almost faster than Rahnis could smooth them over, not that she'd had as much success as she'd have liked in that respect. She'd thought the issues between Rayne and Varral had been settled already... but if the healers were openly siding with Rayne, that would easily be cause enough for the problems to spring right back like burrowing threads.

Tilga nodded, then turned to the dresser and started gathering up her equipment. “A good healer treats the symptoms. A better one sees that the cause of the disease is addressed, too.” She gave Rahnis a quick, sympathetic smile, then looked sadly towards the dying woman on the bed. “Not that it's always possible. Sometimes, there's little anyone can do. After hygiene, that's the very next lesson we learn.”

“Wise words. I might share them with Rayne and Varral tomorrow, if you don't mind.”

“A long soak in one of their own tubs might work better, I think. You won't be short of volunteers for holding Varral under. By the way, I dropped by the nursery on my way back. The babe's settled now. Quaiya said he didn't want to latch at first, but Nya got there in the end.” Tilga set the roll of implements aside, and picked up a well worn piece of leather, into which she poked her used needles, one by one. She folded the cloth over on itself, and let out a long sigh. “Faranth, this just won't do. We need more trained healers here, Rahnis. Weyrfolk volunteers are all very well when all that needs doing is getting numbweed from pot to hide, and the nursing and midwifery is done as well here as anywhere else on Pern... but Tarkan is stretched too thin, and I _know_ I'm barely more than an apprentice myself!”

“Experienced journeymen cost marks, and none of the Crafthalls like to taken on weyrbred youngsters as apprentices, not unless they're paid up front. There's too much chance of losing them to Search, and then there's the ones that...”

“Dragon-fever, we called it in the Hall. You can't get an apprentice to apply himself if all he thinks about is Impressing the next time someone's queen clutches. And even if he _does_ learn well, and come back to the Weyr on Search, chances are he and his dragon'll be dead in fall within a couple of turns, and all that talent goes to waste!”

“Being weyrbred doesn't guarantee Impression.”

“Oh, I know, but by the time they give up on dragons, they're too _old_ to apprentice themselves out. Isn't there some way of getting the Search dragons to pick them out too? The ones who _won't_ Impress?”

That wasn't a question that had ever crossed Rahnis' mind before. “I've no idea. I'd have to ask one of our Searchriders. I'll speak to Quaiya, too. Even in a Weyr, there's always some youngsters that don't fancy dragonriding, and you're right, we _ought_ to make better use of their potential than we do. If we could only find enough marks from somewhere... maybe some of them _could_ take on an apprenticeship in the Halls? Or would you and Tarkan prefer having another journeyman on your team, right away?”

Tilga looked away thoughtfully. “I'd vote for the journeyman. Tarkan, too. But I don't think the rest of the Weyr would agree. If wishes were dragons, we'd have a journeyman and a master and half a dozen apprentices, and _one_ of us would have been able to do something for Remelly. Oh!”

The sudden pained look that crossed Tilga's face as she glanced across the room could mean only one thing. Rahnis followed her gaze back to the bed, to the still form of the woman lying upon it, and the empty dimple on the pillow where the brown firelizard had been lying until only a moment before. He'd gone silent into his suicide, as firelizards sometimes did.

Solemnly, Tilga crossed the room and stooped across the bed to feel for a pulse. The healer held her hand in place long enough to be certain, then sat down onto the bed with a sigh. “Yes, she's gone. Poor woman.”

In the Holds and Halls, a woman of Remelly's age might have birthed half a dozen or more other babes by now, with maybe three or four living beyond their infancy. Or, more likely, the surviving children would have already outlived their mother. Women of the Weyr were supposedly spared the strain of constant childbearing that stole so many lives across the rest of Pern. In an interval, they might be spared it completely, if they so chose, though that type of self-indulgence was frowned upon during a Pass when weyrbred candidates were so desperately needed. Even so, while the death of a Lower Caverns woman in childbed was not an uncommon event, it was still a grievous thing. When a dragonpair died, every dragon of the Weyr marked their passing. For a Lower Caverns woman and her firelizard, there would be no memorial beyond the tears of friends and family. It didn't seem right, or fair; the woman had been no less loved by those who cared for her. “Had she any other children?” Rahnis asked.

Tilga shook her head. “This was her first.”

“What of the babe's father? Do we know who it was?” Chances were, it was one of the riders. Some couples had more lasting attachments than others, but whoever he was, Remelly had cared enough to bear his child. If nothing else, she'd earned the right for her former lover's dragon to be the one to inter her body _between._ Perhaps her brown would find her there. Rahnis hoped he might; he'd been a loyal friend to Remelly.

Tilga took hold of the bed sheet, and carefully drew it up to cover Remelly's face. “Wasn't from Linnebith's last flight – the last of those was born right after Turnover. You'd have to ask one of the aunties; they'd know for sure.”

“They usually do. What about her family?”

“Her brothers were both lost to thread several turns back. But her father's still alive. M'lir”

“Brown Ronath? Flamestrike Wing?”

“That's the one.” Tilga frowned thoughtfully. “He was in the nursery, earlier. So proud of his new grandson. Best if someone tells him soon, I think. Would you mind, weyrwoman?”

Rahnis shook her head. “I'll go right away.”

 

 

 

She left M'lir cradling the sleeping baby in his arms, the wet nurse dozing in a chair beside them both. The brown rider had taken the ill news silently, in a manner that reminded Rahnis uncomfortably of Remelly's firelizard. His dragon would ease the man's grief well enough in the days ahead, but no-one would push either of them to hasten the process. Duty sent her to the records room next, to add the requisite entry to the Weyr's tallies of births and deaths. Rahnis skirted the edge of the main Hall on her way out of the Lower Caverns; the presence of a Harper, even only a journeyman, invariably drew almost the entire population of the Weyr within earshot. The dancing had been restricted to one half of the room, more or less, with the remaining space filled with the usual small gatherings of riders and weyrfolk, variously occupied with work, conversation, gambling...and, in the darker corners, more private pursuits. What shame in enjoying the life you had, while you were still alive to live it?

It didn't take long to update the records. One child born, one new mother dead. And from earlier that day: the as yet unnamed twins, a boy and a girl, born healthy during the early hours of the morning; old uncle Cal, seventy-three turns, dead of the heart pains; Ervi, forty-one turns, choosing the mercy of a draught of fellis when she could bear the pain of the growths in her breast no longer; L'rem and green Frayroth, weyrlings of sixteen turns and fifteen months, killed by Thread.

There might have been another set of names to add to the day's tally. Were she Senior Weyrwoman, there'd be no question that those names ought to be entered into the records in their own right. _Sasseny, rider of green Velsilth. Rescued from an unvisualised leap_ between _by junior gold Alaireth, on her second attempt. First attempt, to retrieve her rider's three months dead weyrmate from_ between _, ended in failure. Obviously_.

Alone with her thoughts and the light, dusty smell of shelf after shelf of old hides, memories of Ista and M'ton brightened like glows in a sudden draught. Being woken by him, with a kiss or a word, his hands easing the ache of an uncomfortable slumber across a table. Scribing Vallenka's rare dictations, her hands recording the Weyrwoman's words while her mind flew with Narnoth across the open oceans surrounding the Island. Small things: a glass of chilled wine or the first pink bloom of the season, left where she could find them when their duties kept them too busy for more than momentary meetings.

Rahnis squeezed her eyes closed, hard, and pushed the memories away into the darkness. _Shutter the glows, let them fade. No sense wasting light where it's not needed, where it can't do anyone any fardling good at all._ But if the blackness masked the memories, it only reminded her more strongly of a deeper darkness still, the cold and all-pervading silence of _between._ Warm and strong and full of life they'd been, no less than Sasseny and Velsilth still were. Part of her was cruel and jealous enough to wish that she and Alaireth had had no better luck calling the weyrling pair out of _between_ than they'd done with Narnoth and M'ton. That Sasseny and her dragon had died, that the girl _wasn't_ right now doing everything possible to reaffirm the joys of living back in the Lower Caverns. Only a small part, perhaps... but oh, it still hurt!

_Why, Alaireth?_

_Dearest Rahnis. We did all we could. All anyone could have done. Sometimes, all anyone can do is nowhere close to being enough._

Just like Tilga had said. _You were listening?_

_Of course. She's a sensible human._

Except... they _had_ come close. Tantalisingly so. Rahnis fingered the empty hide before her and wondered what she might write were she free to do so, knowing what she now knew. Oh, she understood it all so much better now. Today, Alaireth had pulled Velsilth back from _between_ after a delay of mere moments. For Narnoth and M'ton, they'd had no choice but to wait. She and Alaireth had both lived those months knowing their weyrmates weren't alive to share them, and that that in itself would have doomed any earlier attempts at the outset. The important thing was that the queen had called to them in _their_ time at the instant they'd vanished from Pern's skies – just as she'd done for Velsilth earlier that day. It ought to have worked. The strain on Alaireth, reaching out to make that fleeting, tenuous contact across months of time, hadn't been insurmountable. She'd _made_ the contact, had had the strength to hold it. Maybe if they hadn't been in two places at once, if she hadn't been such an impatient _fool!_

And maybe, even if she'd got that right, it still wouldn't have been enough.

Somehow, Rahnis now sensed, the time delay _had_ made a difference. _Between_ itself might be timeless – or, if not entirely timeless, close enough to it that a dragon could use it to move counter to time's usual steady flow – but the real world was not. And even though Alaireth had tried to pull Narnoth and M'ton from the very moment of their deaths, she'd done it from months beyond that point in time. Too far beyond, perhaps. While she and Alaireth had waited, M'ton and Narnoth had faded, blurred. Moved on, beyond their deaths _between_ to whatever came after death, if anything did beyond an eternal expanse of nothingness. Alaireth _had_ reached them in that crucial instant... she and Rahnis had felt them both, had mutually poured their hearts and souls into the effort of touching and calling them... but as hard as they'd tried to pull them back, a greater tide had pulled them on. _That_ had been the crucial difference, today. Touching Velsilth had been like snagging a leaf on the wind. Touching Narnoth had been like attempting to grasp the wind itself. You could _feel_ it well enough as it passed you by, all the strength and force and life of it, all utterly intangible and, far too soon, gone. Gone.

Heartsore, Rahnis let her dragon enfold her in a mental embrace. To have hoped so hard, and to have had so little hope....

_Come home, Rahnis. Now is not a time to be alone._

Obedient to her dragon's wishes, Rahnis set the records room to rights and made her way back down the passage to the Hatching Sands, then across it towards the moonlit exit to the Weyrbowl. She felt the bitter cold of the night air on her face well before she got outside, stealing away the warmth of her tears. Rahnis hurried on up the stairs to Alaireth's ledge, leaving a misty trail of her own breath behind her as she entered the darkness of the weyr. Familiarity guided her feet while her eyes grew accustomed to the change in light, but she hadn't taken more than a couple of strides before she spotted the dark shape of someone leaning casually against the warmth of Alaireth's flank, close to the door to the inner weyr.

“Who the...” _Is that F'ren?_ There weren't many men who'd dare such an intrusion, but if it wasn't him, the likely alternatives were even less welcome. _It had fardling well better not be J'garray! s_ he thought at Alaireth as she unshuttered the glowbasket resting in the alcove closest to the queen's ledge.

 _As if I'd let_ that _one keep my company,_ Alaireth replied indignantly _._ She lifted her head from beneath a fold of wing, and nuzzled her rider's chest gently. _Trath's rider asked after you._

Rahnis gave her queen a quick caress along the length of her jaw. _And?_

_I told Trath he could wait._

The scuff of the rider's boots on the ground warned Rahnis of F'ren's approach, and she turned to see what he had to say. Ignorant of the exchange, the bronze rider echoed the queen's words. “Alaireth said you were on your way back, that I could wait.”

“What for?”

“I thought you might like some company. To talk. About what happened today.”

“What's to say? Thread fell, as it does. ' _Lives are lost and lives are saved, by those dangers-'”_

Alaireth interrupted her mid-quote. _Rahnis._ _He asked of the weyrling_ _we_ _saved. He understands, Rahnis._

She let out a long sigh. “So. Velsilth. How did you know?”

“Something H'koll said. He let it drop that they'd failed to jump with a clear visual. Wasn't hard to figure out what you must've done. Or that you'd be hurting from it.”

“Huh. That what you think, is it?”

Slowly, F'ren extended a hand, and gently wiped away at the lingering traces of moisture on her cheek. “Aren't you?”

She would have drawn away, but instead Alaireth nudged her fractionally closer. _Not a time to be alone, eh?_

_No._

Rahnis looked up at F'ren's face, brightly lit by the glows. He wasn't an easy man to read, but if even if she struggled to gauge what was going through the man's head, behind the depths of those dark, sea-green eyes, Alaireth at least was rarely wrong. Perhaps he _did_ understand, at that... though she wouldn't put it past him to be using any insight he had for his _own_ ends. Again.

 _That may be so,_ Alaireth said. _But his heart is true_. _All he wants tonight is to ease your pain, if he can._

_Truly?_

_Truly. Talk to him, Rahnis. Please._

_Oh, Alaireth. If I talk, I know it'll only hurt more._

_It's hurting you now. Let yourself feel it, and then let it go._

Decision made, the words tumbled out in a flood. “Of course it hurts. Not the _same_ way it did before, but just as hard! I don't know if today makes things better, or worse. If I hate myself more for failing, or succeeding. If I _want_ to believe we could've saved them, somehow... or if all that hope was just twisting the knife, over and over and over. None of it makes a difference! They're still just as dead. They're gone, F'ren, gone somewhere I can't sense, can't follow. And I don't know how to live with that, not yet.” She didn't have the heart to explain herself further, but nor did she need to. Emptied out, it was enough to know that he was there, to hold her close _,_ and to understand. Enough to know that someone else could believe that she and Alaireth had done all that they possibly could have. Enough to know that he cared.

For a while, she let him talk in her stead, proving Alaireth's insight in words of his own choosing. It wasn't long before Rahnis decided that she'd heard enough. _Tell Trath to thank his rider for me, Alaireth. For his understanding,_ she thought to her queen _._ Then, she lifted her face, and stilled his lips with her own.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a deleted scene from Regicide that takes place immediately prior to this chapter. It's 'Salvaging the Sea Creature' and if you're interested in reading it you can find it in chapter 13 of "5th Pass: Drabbles and Deleted Scenes"

_All the colours of the world_  
 _All the colours of my life_  
 _All within your changing eyes_  
 _Changing all within my sight_

_All the world to you I'd give_  
 _All my life is yours to share_  
 _All I am I see anew_  
 _Changing all within your sight_  
  
  
 **Late afternoon, 22.1.35**

**High Reaches Weyr  
**

“Descending vees worked fine the other day! Why change things now?”

“Because we used stacked flights last time we overflew this region.”

“And what a great success _that_ was.”

F'ren eased himself back in his chair, and tried hard not to smile. He'd been having a lot of difficulty with that over the past ten days, but it wouldn't do to ruin things now. H'rack and D'barn were so busy arguing over Snowfall's formation for the next threadfall, they hadn't noticed their audience. He gave the smallest of acknowledging nods to the Weyrleader, then added his own fuel to the fire. “You don't fancy transverse rows then?” That had been the formation he'd witnessed Flamestrike drilling with at dawn, the Weyrleader and his seconds each heading a long row of dragons that would repeatedly cross the path of the threadfall.

H'rack slammed his fist down on the table. “Transverse rows? Come on, F'ren, you know that's a stupid idea. Bronzes at one end, greens and blues at the other, the whole Wing unbalanced and who knows _what_ going on at the far end?”

F'ren shrugged. “Weather-watch says we'll have calm air tomorrow and an even fall of thread. The three of us could keep the pace steady enough for the rest of the Wing, and I think we can trust the greens and blues to look after themselves.” H'rack didn't look convinced; F'ren turned his attention to the older of his two Wingseconds. “What say you, D'barn?”

“Well... it's not ideal, is it?” D'barn puffed out his chest, and his voice took on a lecturing tone. “Even in good conditions, you only need one rider getting it wrong, and you start missing clumps. Then the whole thing falls apart while you chase them down. I'd stick with the vees. Yes, vees would suit the Wing best.”

Oh, the Wingleaders' meeting tomorrow morning would be _highly_ entertaining. Again. Not only had his seconds just thoroughly dismissed Sh'vek's favoured tactics, but they'd also demonstrated that they were starting to think _his_ way about threadfighting. Snowfall would get the leading edge in consequence for this, he was sure... but they were probably due for it again anyway, and at least C'nir and the rest of Cloudburst Wing would be good company. F'ren tapped his dividers thoughtfully on the map, waiting until he had the attention of both men, then lifted his gaze to address Sh'vek. “I sometimes think it's a wonder I get them all flying the same direction at all,” he drawled. The words were a deliberate echo of those the Weyrleader had used the previous day, in the aftermath of Rahnis' suggestion that C'nir take on the role of interim Weyrleader, Telemath having sired Linnebith's most recent clutch. The idea had _not_ gone down well with Sh'vek. You couldn't punish a weyrwoman like you would a regular rider... but even F'ren had found himself impressed by Sh'vek's creativity in finding an alternative.

The Weyrleader pursed his lips. “I expect that would be the slipstream of your overinflated ego, F'ren. I can't imagine anyone choosing to follow you otherwise.”

H'rack's chuckle was briefly picked up by a handful of riders sitting at the surrounding tables before Sh'vek quelled it with a hard glare; the Wingsecond was still utterly unaware of the insult implied by his earlier remarks.

F'ren leaned back in his chair. “We were discussing possible formations for tomorrow, Weyrleader.”

“So I gathered.” Sh'vek reached over D'barn's shoulder, and picked up the slate that the man had been jotting notes onto. “Vees, hmm?”

“Among other options,” D'barn added swiftly. “Transverse rows could work, too.”

F'ren watched as, out of sight of the Weyrleader, H'rack opened and closed his mouth silently. No doubt D'barn's Corhoth had just bespoken H'rack's Simpeth with a warning for the man not to flame his _other_ wing off. “Did you have a preference, Weyrleader?” he asked.

“You know what I require of my Wingleaders, F'ren. Personally, I think your time would be far better spent a-dragonback rather than talking.”

“Very true, sir.” As the Weyrleader stalked away, taking D'barn's slate with him, F'ren motioned for his seconds' attention. “We'll run two drills today: vees first, then the transverse rows. Who'd you place at the tail end of our rows, D'barn? Think your lad'd be up to it? He's seemed a little...”

“Good man, my boy is. Solid rider, solid dragon. Of course he'd be up to it!”

F'ren looked him closely in the eyes. _Was_ he covering for his son, or was his pride genuinely keeping him ignorant of Sk'barn's fragile mental state? “What about B'ly on a tail-end?”

D'barn shook his head vehemently. “That kind of responsibility? It's too early for B'ly. He's still unsettled by Samdra's death; I'm surprised you've not picked up on it yourself, sir.”

F'ren made a mental note not to make his questions _too_ obtuse. D'barn wasn't a fool, after all. “H'rack?”

“What?”

“What do _you_ think?”

H'rack sighed. “I'll miss her too. Nice girl. Fardling bad luck.”

“He meant, what do you think about _B'ly_ ,” D'barn said.

“B'ly? B'ly ought to set his sights a little lower next time. He'll be happier for it. Oh, you meant as a tail-ender? Sorry. I guess he could manage it, but Tr'laggan or F'sigger'd be better.”

Two riders with strong loyalties to Sh'vek; so, H'rack hadn't completely forgotten where his own main loyalties lay. F'ren motioned for the man to stand up. “Get the Wing up, H'rack, and start them drilling. I think a double vee would work better than a single, but I'll leave the initial placements to you. D'barn and I will follow shortly. And yes, this _is_ a test.”

The bronzerider grinned; he'd been demanding a chance at this particular responsibility ever since F'ren had taken Snowfall on. “ _Yes_ , sir!”

D'barn sipped at the remains of his klah, waiting patiently until H'rack had followed the Weyrleader out of earshot before he spoke. “You might have warned me that the Weyrleader was standing right behind us, F'ren. We're bound to get the leading edge now, thanks to that pointless game of yours. And for what?”

Ignoring the man's question, F'ren awkwardly tightened his dividers to the requisite separation and adjusted the width of his jointed metal ruler accordingly. “Corhoth told you what I saw earlier?”

“I had him ask Ormaith what Flamestrike drilled with this morning. You might have told us that, too.”

“I might have. I wonder what your recommendation would have been then, eh?”

F'ren's wingsecond gave him a cold glare over the top of his mug. “Same as right now, likely: don't annoy Sh'vek any more than you do _just by_ _breathing_. And, seeing as you're so keen on hearing our honest opinions today, how about this one? You've put the Wing in unnecessary jeopardy. What do you think of that, _sir?_ Was goading Sh'vek worth _another_ leading edge?”

F'ren positioned the ruler carefully on the map so that each side traced out the path of a different upcoming threadfall, then pushed the map across the table. “Look at it, D'barn. See where the _next_ fall is going to be. Would you rather have the leading edge on this one tomorrow morning, or that one?”

D'barn didn't even glance at the map. “I see your point, but I still don't find it all that convincing.”

“Spring's still a good way off, but I don't want us slackening off between now and then. We've had a chance to catch our breath, but it won't last. At this point, a few extra leading edges will only help to hone the Wing. Keeping us under Linnebith's eye achieves the same end from another direction – I want us adjusted to her interference sooner rather than later, and I want us to be the first Wing she takes for granted. But I'll tell you what _doesn't_ help. You, D'barn, when you conceal the state of my Wing's riders from me. Tell me, Wingsecond. What's eating your boy?”

The older man's face hardened. “There's nothing wrong with my boy!”

“Yes, there is.” F'ren waited, hoping that the other man would admit it if he gave him long enough to think things through.

Eventually, D'barn spoke up again, his voice measured and slow. “And is there any wonder? Shells, Do you think I _like_ watching them face Thread in this Wing, in that state?”

“No more than I do.”

“I find that hard to believe. He's my son, F'ren. I warned him time and again to keep his head down, to stay out of trouble. And it wasn't enough. _This close_ , they were _this close_ to dying, and there was fardling nothing I could do about it!”

“I know it scared them, but they more than earned their survival. Sk'barn's a credit to you.”

The furrows on D'barn's forehead deepened. “Scared me as much as it did them. Sk'barn's not some holdbred idiot; he's grown up seeing the realities of threadfall every day of his life. He and Sacquith, they're a good team, too. Perhaps not quite as capable as I've made out, but they've done everything we've asked of them. I _had_ to let you push them. What else could I do? Shells, the worries I've had, some of the trickier spots you've put them in, pairing them up with some of Snowfall's worst... but what other choice is there? I know they're a little stressed right now, but it's not like they'll be flying in this Wing forever. A few months of extra risk, and then....”

“And then?”

D'barn grunted. “Didn't think you'd last very long as Wingleader, not when I first saw the list. Guess I was wrong on that, but I'd swear on Corhoth's egg that I'm not wrong on this: you've got some changes coming soon. You'll keep Snowfall, but if I have any say in the matter at all, Sk'barn won't be a part of it. He's proved his worth, and Sh'vek knows it.”

“And the rest of them? Who's looking out for them?”

D'barn looks across at him, considering the problem for a long moment. “Us, I suppose.”

F'ren rose from his seat and walked around the table. “Come on. Let's head out and see what H'rack's done with the Wing, shall we?”

 

 

 

Sk'barn's mistake had been simplicity itself to engineer. Sacquith had come out of _between_ fractionally too far forward, and although the young man had almost thrown himself backwards off his dragon's neck in the attempt, all Sk'barn's fingers had managed to grasp was empty air a clear foot away from the tumbling sack of firestone. It thumped off Sacquith's spine, heavily enough that the dragon squealed in pain, then tumbled down unimpeded the rest of the way to the frozen end of the lake, creating a dark hole in the ice that radiated dragon-sized cracks in all directions.

The punishment, as unjustified as both F'ren and Sk'barn knew it to be, was perfectly suited to the incident itself. Water rations for the rest of the day, and shifting enough firestone around to satisfy F'ren's whim. D'barn had been coldly furious when F'ren had announced it at the close of the drill. A hard thing to do, to jeopardise his second's new-hatched trust, but he didn't want to leave the problem that was Sk'barn to fester for any longer.

An hour later, shortly after sunset, Trath passed word to him that Sk'barn was finally on his way. F'ren closed the sack of firestone he'd been filling to pass the time and straightened up to watch him approach. Trath's change in position during the drill had been slight enough, but he'd guessed the boy would recognise it as the same trick he'd had Avret and Vorth pull during the threadfall last turn. But just in case that hadn't been enough to jog Sk'barn's mind, F'ren had already identified four suitably sized pieces of firestone, and placed them in a neat row on top of the low wall that enclosed the bunker.

_He took his time, didn't he Trath? I was beginning to wonder if he'd show up at all, if D'barn had mentioned that I'd been asking after him, and scared him off. Not that you can run far with a dragon. Any idea what he's been up to? He didn't chase after that green, did he? Oth?_

_He was up in his weyr with Sacquith, watching Alaireth and Heggith and the rest of Thunderclap Wing bringing that sea creature back._

_Rather them than me. After that?_

_Sacquith sleeps deeply now, so I cannot ask him. But look how his rider walks. He seems... wary._

_As well he might be._

_As you should be, too. He wanted you dead._

F'ren shook his head. _Last turn, yes. Now, I'm not so sure. He's not tried anything else since._

_That we know of._

_Very well. Nothing that we know of._

Dragonriders didn't face the same criminal penalties as the landbound did; a man might be turned out of his Hold for certain crimes, shunned and exiled, but you couldn't do that to a dragonrider. Faranth, some holdfolk were fool enough to believe the myth that a dragonman _couldn't_ commit a crime at all... not that the Weyrs were in any hurry to disabuse them of that notion. For what Sk'barn had done... if F'ren had brought his evidence before any other Weyrleader, the pair would have found themselves transferred and grounded for life, to live shamed amongst weyrfolk that despised them. Sacquith's misery would only add to the burden of Sk'barn's guilt. Strangely enough, F'ren was almost glad that it wasn't an option. What a waste it would be!

The bluerider stumbled as he drew closer, his eyes lingering on the four rocks sat on top of the wall.

“Problem, Sk'barn?” F'ren asked, and beckoned him on.

Sk'barn shook his head. “Icy patch, Wingleader.” He passed through the gap in the wall, eyes fixed firmly forwards, seeing neither the rocks to the one side of him nor F'ren on the other. When he could go no further without kicking the loose stones in front of him, he stopped and pulled himself stiffly to attention. “Reporting for duty, sir.”

“Turn around, Sk'barn.”

The lad did as ordered.

“Do you know why you're here?”

“Sacquith and I performed poorly during the afternoon drill, sir.” The lie was clearly galling, but he'd done well to swallow his pique at the injustice and say it.

“Oh? _I_ thought it was because your wingleader was treating you unfairly.”

A look of surprise flickered across the bluerider's face. F'ren looked him up and down, then paced off to one side, forcing the young man's eyes to follow him back towards the wall and the small line of stones. While Sk'barn watched, F'ren pulled a fifth carefully selected stone out of his pocket, of a size with the second smallest of the other four. He held it out long enough for Sk'barn to see it clearly, then chucked it across to him and gave the lad a grim smile. “I know it was you.”

“Know what was-”

F'ren cut off the lad's reply with a slicing gesture of one hand. “That's _enough,_ ” he hissed. “Count yourself lucky that I also know _why_ you did it.”

“But we didn't do anything! Sacquith will tell you, he'll tell anyone, we did _nothing_ wrong!”

Sk'barn dared deny it, even now?

_Go easy, F'ren. He's scared now._

F'ren took a deep breath, and allowed Trath to soothe him. “Self-preservation's a good instinct to have; don't ruin it now by angering me,” he muttered. F'ren reached out and picked up the smallest stone, the one that was supposed to be green Vorth. If he was lucky, Sh'vek had noticed that she always flew beside Trath during threadfall. If he was even luckier, the Weyrleader had already drawn the erroneous conclusion that he trusted her at his back. “Do you remember Ushalth, Sk'barn?”

The bluerider nodded slowly. “I remember.”

Ushalth had been the most recent High Reaches dragon to die – very slowly – of phosphine poisoning. She'd suffered for eight full days before her burns killed her. “So do I,” F'ren said, tossing the stone he'd picked up from hand to hand. “S _tone to flame your troubles away._ Did you intend the same fate for us, or were you hoping for something a little faster? _”_

“No!” Sk'barn shrank in on himself. His eyes darted up towards his weyr, towards his dragon, looking for an escape. And then, emboldened, back towards F'ren. “Prove it. Prove it was me.”

The lad was still almost rooted to the spot, but one of his hands had drifted to his side, towards the hilt of his knife. One by one, his trembling fingers came into contact with the tight leather wrappings.

 _You've scared him too much now,_ Trath whispered into his mind. _Sacquith is still ignorant. Do you want me to make him pay attention to his rider? If he pulls that knife..._

_Not yet. I'm pretty sure that Sacquith finding out what he did is what Sk'barn's most afraid of right now. That'd tip him over, if nothing else._

How _sure, F'ren? I can feel your heart racing right now._

_Just as sure as I am that these two are worth keeping hold of._

_Is that meant to reassure me? Because it doesn't, F'ren. Be careful, please._

_I will._ Slowly, F'ren pulled his own knife free, and tossed it aside. “Prove it? When we both know the truth already? The fact of your guilt's not at issue, Sk'barn, not between the two of us alone. Unless you want to try again?”

The bluerider pulled his hand away as if his own knife had burned him, and stuffed it behind his back. “I didn't... I wouldn't...”

“It's the sharper weapon up here that worries me more,” F'ren said, and tapped his skull. “You didn't use your belt knife to try to get me killed the first time, did you?”

Sk'barn swallowed uncomfortably. “Sacquith didn't have anything to do with it. He can't know, I don't _want_ him to know.”

And that, F'ren supposed, was as close to a confession as he was likely to get. He walked closer, and placed his good hand companionably on the young man's shoulder. “He needs to, Sk'barn,” he said, keeping his voice as firm and soft as he could. “He's your dragon. You _can't_ carry on hiding the stains on your conscience from him; it's not good for either of you. Telling him later is the first part of your punishment.”

“Then what?”

Sk'barn looked him in the eyes, and held the contact; F'ren couldn't tell if it was done out of sheer guts, or a desperate hope for absolution. Perhaps it even signified the beginnings of trust?

“Then we decide whether we need to tell your father.”

“D'barn will _kill_ me!” Sk'barn muttered.

“Oh, good. It'll save _me_ the bother.” The soft edge of F'ren's sarcasm almost raised a smile on the lad's face. “But perhaps it would be best not to upset him with this right away. Sacquith has to come first, and talking this through with him will be hard enough, I'm sure. While you're at it, I'd like you both to do some time thinking, and decide between you whether or not you want to keep flying with me in Snowfall.”

Sk'barn stared back in disbelief. “Whether _we_ want to? You're not going to transfer me for this?”

F'ren laughed. “If I had that much power as a Wingleader, Trath and I would be leading a _very_ threadbare Wing. No, you're a good rider, Sk'barn. If I wanted to be rid of you, I'd have kept silent today. Your father's praise of you alone ought to be enough to see you safely removed from my Wing. Give that some thought, too, if you need to. And if that's what you want, I'll see that it still happens. But if I can, I'd rather like to keep you. Snowfall will need men like you this spring.”

“You'd trust me? After what I did?”

F'ren moved to the side, took hold of one Sk'barn's hands, and raised it to point at the darkening sky to the southwest. “Look there. Do you see it?”

“See what?”

“There – about ten, maybe fifteen degrees above the outcrop on the Weyr's fourth spindle.” The Red Star was fading more and more each Turn, but with neither moon yet up there was no mistaking its malevolent red glare.

Sk'barn squinted, then nodded soberly. “I see it. I think I understand. _Dragonmen must fly..._ ”

There was no need to complete the verse; Sk'barn had already taken the reminder of their true, mutual enemy on board. “Indeed we must.”

_F'ren? I didn't want to interrupt earlier, but tomorrow's meeting has been moved forwards._

F'ren swore under his breath. _Typical. To when? Today? Please don't tell me it's_ now _?_

_I'm afraid so. Ormaith asks me to hurry you up._

_Right. Tell him I'm on my way._ F'ren gathered up the remaining stones from the bunker wall, and passed them back to Sk'barn. “Here. You're meant to be shifting sacks of firestone around, aren't you? Shift these wherever you want, and count the job done. Oh, and expect an early roll call tomorrow. If the Weyrleader decides he wants the whole Weyr flying the same patterns... I expect we'll be drilling transverse rows again at first light. If so, you and Sacquith will be anchoring one of the tail-tips.”

Sk'barn pocketed the stones. “Thanks, Wingleader. We'll do our best.”

“Good man.” He slapped the bluerider on the shoulder, and left the bunker at a quick jog. How long did he have before Sh'vek decided he was late enough for a proper reprimand?

Trath's mind was amused as the dragon picked up on the thought. _It's not you that needs to worry today. It's Telemath's rider._

_C'nir? What's he done now?_

_Doing now. With Oth's rider._

F'ren laughed explosively. _Ha. So Telemath's getting his practice in, is he? Faranth, this'll be fun!_


	25. Chapter 25

_From the golden egg of Faranth_   
_Hatched a dragon truly blessed._   
_For she and every other dragon_   
_Heard the rider she Impressed._   
_Founder of the Weyr of Benden_   
_Wise and true, strong and serene._   
_Will Pern ever see her equal?_   
_Weyrwoman Torene._

  
**Late afternoon, 22.1.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

   
The warm water swirled soothingly around Delene's body. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back, feeling the heat encroach across her brow and up to her lips as the water lapped over her face. Slowly, she opened her mind more fully to the sheer deluge of the ever-present dragon voices, in all their strangeness and familiarity. With her mind so open to them, they threatened to scour her mind raw, all the hard corners and edges and empty spaces of them. Dragon minds so much like Linnebith's, who matched her so completely, so perfectly... and at the same time so _unlike_ that she was almost terrified by it.

It hadn't used to be as bad as this. Before Maenida's injury, before she'd had to spend so much time in close rapport with another queen, they'd never been so _loud_. Sometimes she could hear them, sometimes she couldn't, and there was never any rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes she could bespeak a single dragon, and sometimes she'd say something to G'dil's Heggith and the whole Weyr would hear. Sometimes she'd hear a dragon call out to her desperately in panic, during Threadfall... but not always. And sometimes she'd find herself eavesdropping on the most intimate of exchanges between dragon and rider before she could close her mind. That had been the only type of control she'd ever learned, how to shut the voices off when they became too much for her. So what if she couldn't be like the fabled Torene? Or even like Malia, the last High Reaches Weyrwoman who'd been able to hear all dragons? She was weyrwoman to gold Linnebith, and that ought to have been all that mattered.

Before she and Linnie had found each other, the voices had been mere whispers. Her family had put it down to girlish silliness and an overactive imagination at the start. When it didn't go away, when she'd started repeating more of what she'd heard, they took it more seriously: starving her, drugging her with wine and the fellis they couldn't afford, even risking the journey to the Hold between threadfalls to beg Lord Kep to send for a proper Healer from the Hall. It was only when they tried beating it out of her that she finally called on the whispery voices for the first time, begging them for help. And a whole Wing of dragons had miraculously appeared, G'dil and Heggith at their head, whisking her away from the home she'd grown to hate before anyone knew what was happening. Just like in all of her favourite Harper-songs. But no Harper-song could ever match what she'd found at the Weyr, the day her darling Linnie had hatched from her egg.

 _I am an egg_ , she thought to herself and to Linnebith, concentrating on the warmth of the water surrounding her. Enclosed, safe, secure. She could hear the beating of her own heart in her ears, but the flapping of the shutter-latch in the wind was muted by the water now. Warm, womb-like water, like the comfort of Linnebith, everything she was and all they shared together.

And the voices softened into a blur.

She was still open to them _all_ , should have been halfway to tears with it by now. They were there, but not the same way as they had been. For the very first time, it was just as that smelly, dusty old record had described. _Oh Linnie, Linnie! It's working!_

Her queen's mind caressed her own, sparkling with excitement. _I know, my Leney. Who shall you speak to first?_

 _Let me think._ Heggith was the dragon she was most certain of finding, but she was still feeling too annoyed with G'dil to try him. No, she wouldn't think of that now. Delene let her hands unfold to float just beneath the rippling surface of her pool. Kiath was asleep, naturally. Should she try Ormaith? One of the other bronzes? Or perhaps even Alaireth?After all, it had been Rahnis who'd inadvertently gifted her with all her new knowledge. They'd been down in the records room together, on Sh'vek's orders, setting the Weyr's accounts straight. While Delene transcribed the numbers from the slates Rahnis had already prepared – and that had been another complete waste of time; why hadn't Rahnis just written them right into the records in the first place? – the other weyrwoman had been working her way through the Weyr's clutch records, deciding on which ones needed re-copying most urgently. As if a task like that could ever be urgent! Delene had been sure she'd chosen to start with the oldest ones on purpose, too; oh, they'd stunk the whole room out, and as for the dust! She'd had to wash her hair _and_ change her clothes after they'd finished.

Then, when Delene was working on the final slate, Rahnis had called her over, and asked her what she thought of a certain hide the other weyrwoman had found, and hadn't been able to make sense of. It had been rolled up amongst the other clutch-records, Rahnis had told her, but even though it mentioned eggs a lot, it apparently also mentioned weather: fog and storms and bright stars. It hadn't made a jot of sense to Rahnis otherwise, and she'd had to give up on trying to make head or tail of it almost right away. Delene had peered down at the unrolled hide, and instantly spotted Weyrwoman Malia's name in one of the upper corners. That had been all she'd needed to see to know that the old record might be really, truly important. Delene had had to _ask_ the woman to give up her chair so she could sit down and take a proper look at it, but at least Rahnis had made up for it by volunteering to fetch some fresh klah.

The words on the hide had been very faded and hard to read, but she'd worked her way through it as swiftly as she could manage, her fingers tracing out each precious word. She'd had to stop several times, to brush away dust, or to go back and make a different guess at the meaning of some of the trickier words, but they _did_ make sense to her on the whole, far more than they ever would to a woman like Rahnis. The better Delene got to know her, the more she wondered how the other queenrider had ever Impressed at all. She could be awfully snitty at times, and _so_ self-centered. Rahnis also liked to think she was smarter than everyone else around her, but she wasn't, not really. _She_ had never heard the speechless voices of unborn dragons in the shell, not like Delene had with Linnebith's clutches. Or suffered the storm of a full Weyr of dragon voices, or felt the brightness of their minds. Delene herself had never thought of them in _exactly_ those terms before then, but there was no mistaking what Malia had meant, especially knowing that Malia had been able to hear other dragons too. Best of all, the hide was clearly meant as more than just a record. It was practically a tutorial, something she'd despaired of ever finding. No-one knew _why_ some rare, special women could hear all dragons, but everyone agreed it wasn't something that could be taught, it was just what you did. Asking for help wasn't something that Torene had ever done, Delene was sure of that.

When Rahnis came back, Delene had tried her best to conceal her excitement and told her that she'd been right, that it _had_ just been some old nonsense that they didn't need any more. Rahnis had put it in the rubbish pile with all the other indecipherable ones, but Delene had rescued it later, before some drudge could take it away and burn it. In the sevenday since then, she'd spent every spare moment poring over the record, again and again – the original at first, and then, when the old hide had started crumbling, a fresh copy in her own hand. It had taken a few days just to get the knack of opening her mind wide by choice. She hadn't been able to bear it for very long and, worse, she'd found herself opening up to the Weyr's dragons randomly and often, for hours after each attempt. But, each day, she'd seemed to be getting closer and closer to the quiet control that Malia had described, and the sense of being overwhelmed by the dragons grew steadily less and less.

The thought that _she,_ Delene, might one day be remembered as being as talented as Malia – or even Torene of Benden! – had spurred her on to greater efforts. If she could learn to control her talent, to hear the dragons as and when she chose rather than the random, all-or-nothing contacts that had been the best she could achieve until now... Oh, if she only could! The Weyrleader had long ago given up on her ever managing to control her talents, she knew that. He certainly wouldn't have offered the post of senior weyrwoman elsewhere, or dared threaten her with a transfer, if he'd thought she could do what she was doing now!

It just wasn't fair! She knew she'd been shrinking in the Weyrleader's estimation ever since Rahnis had arrived at the Weyr. Rahnis might be older than she was, but _she_ was nothing special. Alaireth had hatched a full two Turns after Linnebith had, besides. Could Rahnis spend practically the whole day bearing the weight of Kiath's mind, with no respite? And then, mind stretched wide, feel the agony of every injured dragon in the Weyr? Hardly. But _she_ did, day in and day out, and no-one appreciated how hard it all was except for her own dear Linnie. Not even G'dil, these days. She was _still_ waiting for him to apologise decently for not backing her up, that night that R'fint had said all those hideous, _hideous_ things about her. Well, she'd show him, and Sh'vek too! She'd show the whole Weyr what a fine Weyrwoman she'd make, put a stop to all those complaints and grumbles she kept overhearing. No, they wouldn't dare complain about her any more if they _knew_ she could listen to them whenever she chose! The whisper of dragon voices in her mind started to crescendo, and Delene hastily soothed her annoyance. It wouldn't do to let her control slip now, not when she'd maintained it for so long. Past time she took the next step, and bespoke a dragon. Alaireth would do nicely.

Alaireth wasn't that far away physically, but touching the mind of another dragon wasn't quite like calling out to someone beside you, or in the next room, or even the valley over. Some dragons were more open than others, depending on what they were doing, or just what they _were_. The search-dragons were always easy to hear, and some of the greens – Faranth, she heard Chessalth almost every day! The blues and browns and bronzes were usually harder to listen in on, but she could make _them_ hear _her_ more reliably than she could with the female dragons. Alaireth, being a queen, was a deep presence: something like a jewel strung on a pendant, was how Delene thought of it. An ugly jewel, compared with her Linnie, or at least one which it wouldn't flatter her to wear. She'd spoken to the queen directly on several occasions in the past, but only ever when she'd recently been in rapport with Kiath – it was hard _not_ to hear the stronger-minded dragons on those occasions.

Tentatively, Delene reached her mind out to that of the other queen. _Alaireth?_

_Delene!_

The sensation that came back to her was one of a shocked sense of alertness, and something like the reverberations of a drumskin. It settled, and then the queen's mind changed again, and the linkage broke.

“Oh.” Delene pulled her head out of the water and ran her hands over her wet hair. How disappointing!

 _Alaireth and Rahnis ask if they're needed, and if so, if you need them right away,_ Linnebith said. _They_ ought _to be more respectful when they speak to me. Shall I tell them no, or yes?_

 _Are they busy?_ Really _busy_? Rahnis always _said_ she was, but she could shirk an unwelcome task just as well as anyone, Delene knew.

_They're out by the lake. Rahnis is with the team skinning the sea creature that the wing on morning sweep spotted._

_That dreadful thing G'dil found? They brought it_ back _here?_ Delene wrinkled her nose in disgust. It was hardly a weyrwoman's work, that. All that effort, just for a few pieces of hide? And the mess! Even the _dragons_ had complained of the stench of it. No, she didn't want Rahnis coming anywhere near her until the woman had had time to bathe. _Tell them no, Linnie_ , she said. Perhaps she should practise a little more first, then surprise them properly with her strength and control another time? _I'm going to try for Telemath next, Linnie_ , Delene decided, and started to feel for the bronze dragon's mind. She let the sparks of the other minds in her head shimmer and brighten, seeking out the bronze.

_Are you sure you should?_

_Why, Linnie?_ Telemath was easy to find, perhaps because he'd mated with Linnebith so often. In Delene's mind, he was embedded deep in a cluster of other dragons. She pulled at him, catching at his mind. It felt like sifting a mixture of sand and small stones through her fingers, keeping hold of only the largest. The bronze dragon's mind was particularly loud today, and a lot more... oh! A surge of pleasure thrilled through her body, and she broke off the connection hastily before it could properly form.

_That's why. Oth rises._

_Oh Linnie, how embarrassing!_ She could feel herself blushing, and giggled again. _I'd better not tell G'dil about that, or he'll give me_ that _face again._

_I thought you liked it when he got jealous?_

Normally, she did... but G'dil's behaviour had left a lot to be desired, recently. He'd been particularly annoying over the last few days. Only two days ago, he'd spent the entire evening meal moaning, telling her that she spent too little time with him and too much with Maenida and Sh'vek, that she needed to make sure the weyrfolk respected her but that she shouldn't spend so much time with the other bronzeriders, that she worked herself too hard, that she needed to work harder, and all sorts of other bothersome complaints that didn't make any sense at all when you went from one to the other. It had been quite a relief after the meal when F'ren had appeared practically unannounced back at her weyr, requesting Linnebith's help with his Wing. He'd wanted the queen to keep her mind's eye on them during the Threadfall that had fallen over Misty Hold the following day, and ooh, what a miserable chore that had turned out to be! Rain, rain and more rain, broken up by sleet and the odd patch of live thread, and the dragons almost as grumpy as the riders. At least he'd been properly grateful to her, before as well as after. Delene still couldn't make up her mind what had shocked her more: that a Wingleader – even one like F'ren – had actually asked her for her assistance, or the fact that he'd flirted outrageously with her all the while. Oh, the look on G'dil's face! It had been so _funny_ , that she'd encouraged F'ren to stay and share their skin of wine, just to see G'dil pull that constipated frown again. Perhaps next time, she should invite him to stay even longer? F'ren wasn't half as good looking as G'dil was, not now that he'd been so horribly scored, but it _had_ been amusing to watch the pair of them bristling at each other.

Delene pulled herself cross-legged in her bathing pool and slicked her hair back from her face. Her fingers weren't looking _too_ wrinkly yet, so there was time for another few attempts. _Who do you think I should try next, Linnie? Heggith or Ormaith?_

Linnebith stretched herself out on her couch. _Neither of them are chasing greens._

As if they would! Sh'vek was Weyrleader, and G'dil _knew_ she didn't like it.She swirled the water around her waist with one hand, and watched the ripples sparkling in the soft glow-light. This time, she'd try just closing her eyes. The first two attempts proved to be frustrating failures, but on the third her mind opened right into the gently veiled cacophony she'd experienced earlier. She couldn't pull out individual conversations, but she could tell who was who, if she thought carefully about it – like picking out the loudest or least tuneful singers in a chorus, or spotting specific dancers from a distance at a crowded gather. Hieth was over _there_ with his Wing, _that_ was the blue she and Linnie had rescued in the last fall, and _that_ mind was Ormaith, all tight and close to Kiath, even though the queen was asleep. Delene pulled her mind back from the other queen quickly – she didn't want to wake her up.

Really, Maenida should have been sent off to Igen or Ista to retire in peace _months_ ago. Sh'vek could have arranged it easily enough, and then _she_ wouldn't have had to waste all her time sitting with the Weyrwoman when she could have been keeping up with her other duties. Why should she be blamed when things went wrong in the Lower Caverns if she wasn't around to help Egritte? How could she possibly prepare herself to take on the full rank of Senior Weyrwoman if all she did was sit around in Maenida's weyr all day, soothing Kiath and dabbing at Maenida's drool and making sure the healer's apprentices cleaned up after her messes properly? Poor Maenida, she was in such a miserable state. It would be months yet before she'd be off the fellis completely, and on her current dose she slept so much each day that there were barely hours enough to see her cleaned and fed. Maenida was doing better at that than she had been, but the fellis-confusion made her ever so _sad_ , especially when Kiath complained that she wasn't being herself right. No-one had had the heart to tell her that she wouldn't be Weyrwoman for much longer. Sh'vek was suffering, too. He could barely stand to look at Maenida when she was awake, not that you'd know that unless you'd seen him with her. Well, he wouldn't have to put on a brave face for very much longer. Linnebith would rise to mate in two or three months' time, and then... What then? After today, G'dil had a _lot_ of making up to do if _he_ wanted to be Weyrleader!

 _If Heggith can catch me_ , Linnebith said. _It might be Telemath again._

Delene pouted. C'nir just didn't value her like G'dil did, didn't respect her properly. Though maybe G'dil didn't do enough there, either.

 _You should talk to Heggith_ , Linnebith suggested. _Tell him how you feel._

 _You're right, I should._ She reached out to touch the bronze dragon's mind. _Hello, Heggith._ _What's G'dil doing?_

_Delene? What are...? G'dil is busy. Very busy. The Weyrleader had some extra work for our Wing. G'dil promises he'll see you later. He has a gift for you, too._

Heggith's mind – at G'dil's prompting, she could sense that much - showed her a vague image of an elaborate necklace. She'd seen an example of the same work at the crafthall some Turns back, and G'dil had promised her then he'd get her one, one day. Delene grasped at the image, wishing she could hold it up to her skin in front of a mirror and inspect it properly, but it faded away. Oh, G'dil _did_ love her! And he'd be _so_ pleased to hear of what she could do. _Well I have some news. See? See what I'm doing?_

Heggith was nonplussed. _We are busy. Not now, Delene._

Heggith pulled away, and she tried to push herself closer to the bronze's mind, and G'dil's too by default. The link broke, but before it failed completely she was rewarded with the very clear implication that idling in a bath was hardly the work of a proper weyrwoman, even if she _was_ the prettiest woman in the Weyr. Well! Necklace or no necklace, perhaps _C'nir_ would be her Weyrleader. Or maybe even Sh'vek. _He_ wanted her to be a strong, effective Weyrwoman, not like G'dil who just liked her being beautiful, and if she could master these new tricks he couldn't fail to recognise how special she was. Sh'vek was a bit on the old side, true, but no one could say he wasn't still a very handsome man. And those flashing eyes!

_Delene, what a pleasure._

Delene squeaked in shock – she hadn't meant to touch Ormaith, but somehow she had. Ormaith's voice held a subtle echo, sure sign that he spoke for Sh'vek as well. Blithely disregarding the fact that _this_ contact had been quite accidental, she pushed her speculation aside and clasped the bronze dragon's mind firmly.

_I can control it, Ormaith! Look! Do you see what I can do?_

_That's very good. Sh'vek likes it. But you_ are _in your bathing pool...._

She surged upwards, splashing the room. She hadn't meant to show him quite as much as that.

Ormaith was apologetic. _No, no. It's_ very _good work, Delene, and Sh'vek is proud of you. He'll speak to you properly about it later. You carry on with your bath, now._

Delene settled back into the water with a broad grin. If a little flirtation with F'ren had made G'dil go out and buy that necklace, shells, what would he do once he learned of what she'd seen in _Ormaith_ 's mind?

 _You're my weyrwoman, Leney_ , Linnebith said smugly. In the dragon's mind, there was no question at all that it was right that the bronzes should compete for her and her rider. _This is precisely what we both deserve._

Delene couldn't agree more.

 

 

 


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thought I'd update a little earlier than usual. Next update might be as early on Thursday or Friday. Enjoy!

_A Wing of dragons, flaming, passes_  
 _Scours the landscape free of grasses_  
 _Billowed wings and bellowed voices_  
 _Call us all to hear their choices_  
 _Search is answered by the free_  
 _Do you, dragon, Search for me?_

_We ring the dragons, white-robed, waiting_  
 _For the hatchlings: shells escaping._  
 _Dragons humming, sands a-burning,_  
 _Would-be weyrlings, hopeful yearning,_  
 _Dreams of dragons, flying free._  
 _Do you, dragon, Dream of me?_

**  
Early afternoon, 9.2.35**

**Ista Weyr**

  
It didn't take long for the word to spread. Carth had scarcely settled her first egg into the sands of the hatching cavern when the first group of well-wishers had arrived. Three more eggs made their appearance in quick succession, though not half as fast as the dozens of weyrfolk eager to witness the laying of Carth's latest clutch. This would be her fiftieth, in her fiftieth turn of life, a record matched by only the best of queens that had graced Pern with their presence.

Vallenka twisted the stem of her wine glass idly between her fingers, and considered dismissing the crowd. Carth had plenty of eggs yet to lay, and although the celebration was certainly deserved and no thread was due until three days' time, the weyrfolk still had their work to be getting on with. Besides, she was tiring of hearing the same comments over and over. Yes, the first egg was a good size, well-marked, boded well for a bronze. Yes, the next ones looked like fine eggs, too. Yes, Carth was a marvellous queen. And yes, likely she would be burning her feet here on the sands for the next few days straight, which was why she and everyone else with any sense had stuck to the stone tiers. The platitudes were always the same, and even the novelty of it being a landmark clutch was wearing thin. The odds on clutch size and the number of bronzes were shortening rapidly, but regardless of whether an egg hatched bronze or green, each one looked much the same as another when you'd seen almost a thousand of them. She herself was more interested in the young dragons enshelled within. Narnoth's sire, Aguadath, had come from the same clutch as Carth herself, and thus this newest clutch would only refine the line of dragons descended from Razinth and Ioth further. Wings short in the bones and long in the sail would maximise speed and agility, hopefully with none of the wasted length in neck and limbs that the most recent crop of weyrling dragons had inherited from their dam's paternal line.

One of the Lower Caverns girls approached her offering a refill, but Vallenka waved her away, and turned to check on Carth. The queen never fussed much about how her eggs were arranged right after laying, instead spending her time between each new arrival systematically refreshing the sand banked around each egg, replacing cool sand with hot. Carth was working on her third egg at present; that gave Vallenka a few more minutes to see the crowd off before returning to her dragon's side to give Carth her full attention. Now, where had the headwoman got to? Not talking to K'mallo... perhaps over in Jessa's group of-

_GET OUT!_

Carth's bellow echoed around the cavern, silencing the crowd and leaving several of the more fearful souls cowering on the spot – if not running for the exit to the bowl. Vallenka twisted on the spot, instinctively looking for the source of her queen's distress, even as the understanding reached her that the intrusion had been mental rather than physical. _Carth? What happened?_

The queen dropped back onto all fours and furled her wings. _No one is to address me while I lay except you or my mate. No one!_ She took a step forward and hissed at the crowd. _She isn't even here! This will_ not _do!_

Vallenka took a step of her own, locked in sympathy with her dragon. Something hard crunched beneath her sole; looking down, she saw the shattered remains of her wineglass, and instantly disregarded it. Taking care to make her voice carry, she addressed the crowd. “You heard Carth. Time to leave.”

Leaving the weyrfolk to make their own exits, Vallenka hurried across the sand towards Carth. _Someone spoke to you? Another gold? Who?_ It surely wouldn't have been a green!

 _It was a_ woman _! She has a queen of her own, but that gives her no right at all to speak to_ me.

_Ah. I think I know who disturbed you. I'll have someone bespeak Ormaith at the High Reaches, and make sure she doesn't do it again. Are she and her queen near? She'd have to be, to stumble into your mind like that._

Carth tilted her head thoughtfully northwards. _Her queen is a long way away. I assume she is, too. I can sense my daughter there, and Ormaith. I have told him to bring your brother, and then he can apologise for the girl's behaviour in person._

_Carth! Ordering another Weyrleader around?_

The queen's eyes held an almost-smug twinkle. _Don't tell me_ you _disapprove!_

 

 

 

Sh'vek arrived at Ista Weyr a little over two hours later. Between toasts to each newly laid egg, Vallenka was soon apprised of all the recent news from her brother's Weyr, including a few titbits that dragon gossip hadn't already provided her. If Maenida's relapse hadn't been quite as bad as Sh'vek had initially feared, she and her dragon nevertheless remained in a most precarious state of health. The other repercussions of Sh'vek's announcement of his Weyrwoman's retirement had also been all too predictable: Delene attempting to capitalise on her increased authority in the Weyr, and the bronze riders (with very few exceptions) drawn to her like a swarm of bite-mes to rotten fruit. From what Sh'vek had told her, it sounded like Delene had thoroughly indulged herself in all of the extra attention, and that G'dil was still attempting to buy his way back into her affections. The girl's talents in speaking to other dragons might have suddenly deepened, but her character certainly had _not._

Vallenka _had_ already heard – though only as an unconfirmed rumour – the news about C'nir, but not that it had been Rahnis who'd been the one to suggest that Sh'vek step aside in favour of his Second. The extra information didn't come as much of a surprise; all of Ista's weyrwomen were well-versed in such precedents, and Vallenka's first Weyrleader had come into his knots in that exact same way. The punishment Sh'vek had set the girl for her impertinence had been amusingly creative: one of the High Reaches Wings had happened across a stranded deepwater creature out on the western shoals, and Rahnis had been tasked with leading the retrieval before the Tillek Seaholders could claim it for themselves. The flesh of the creatures was unpalatable to everything short of Thread, but the rough skin, cartilage and bones were highly prized by the Crafthalls, and the thick fat layer could be rendered down for oil. Sh'vek had bragged at length of the much-needed marks the Weyr had obtained from the salvage, and the hours of stinking, filthy labour the weyrwoman and her team had gone through to earn it. While both weyrwomen's behaviour left a lot to be desired, at least Sh'vek seemed to have the rest of his Weyr well in hand.

Leaving her brother to enjoy the last of the chilled wine, Vallenka crossed the sands and ducked beneath Carth's wings, half-spread for balance as the queen poised herself above the sand. She felt along the base of the queen's distended belly, searching for the uppermost eggs. Carth was more eager than usual to have the laying of her clutch over and done with. She'd been grounded a full sevenday earlier than for her last clutch; that fact alone was enough to suggest a large number of eggs, even before they'd grown big enough to be felt beneath the skin. An added sevenday of discomfort for the queen, plus all the extra hours inherent in laying... yes, Vallenka could well understand Carth's impatience. Fortunately, Carth was an experienced layer, and the eggs seemed to be moving down well. Beneath the light touch of her fingers, she could feel the steady shifting and pressing of muscles. She moved her hands onward, further down the queen's body, to the rounded swelling made by the egg that Carth was in the process of laying. A wave-like ripple grew and crested around it; Vallenka sucked in a breath, held it, then exhaled in unison with Carth as the queen eased the egg out onto the sands.

_Nine! Well done, Carth. Well done!_

The queen turned neatly on the spot and dipped her head to inspect her newest egg. She licked it clean, scooped out a hollow in the sand close to the rest of the clutch, and nudged it gently into place. Then, working swiftly and carefully, she banked the warm sand up and around it, until only the uppermost third was visible.

_May I, Carth?_

_If you're quick._

The queen stepped aside just far enough to allow her rider to approach the egg. Vallenka stretched out a hand, and traced the moist surface of the shell. The egg was still slightly misshapen from its laying – that was perfectly normal at this very early stage – and was already swirled with bands of cream and pale brown, freckled in places with richer colouring. By the time it was ready to hatch, such marks might have faded away almost to nothing, or intensified dramatically; one could never really tell. Sensing that Carth wanted to lie down and doze for several hours before laying the next few eggs, she didn't linger to inspect the rest; there'd be time a-plenty for that over the next month and a bit. Leaving the queen to settle herself, Vallenka turned her attention back to her brother. He caught her eye, and raised his glass in a salute to Carth.

“To Ista's Queen, and a fine clutch in the laying.”

Beckoning the girl at work sweeping the stands to fill a glass for her as well, Vallenka returned to her own seat. “So. You were telling me about Delene. How much control _does_ she have, aside from the added range? And how much better do you think she'll get?”

“How much? The way you ask, you almost sound jealous.”

“Hardly.” She took a sip from her wine, and dismissed the girl back to the Lower Caverns. Picking up on her hint, Sh'vek waited until the girl had gathered her broom and moved out of earshot before speaking again.

“No, you're not jealous at all, are you,” Sh'vek said, his brows drawing together into a tight frown. “And I remember how often you wished for the trick yourself when you were younger. Why the concern, Vall?”

“ _My_ Weyr isn't slipping out from under me.” _That_ remark won her a particularly sour look from her brother. “You said Rahnis found some old record of Malia's. I'll tell you this for free: she knew _exactly_ what she was doing putting it into Delene's hands. Regardless of what she told you when you questioned her about it, I'm sure it had very little at all to do with making Delene less of a distraction to the dragons during fall.”

Sh'vek grimaced. “What _is_ it with Istan weyrwomen?”

He might not appreciate her lording it over him, but Ista was her Weyr, not his. “Do you want me to explain, or not?” Vallenka waited, and a few seconds later he gestured for her to continue. “Do you recall who was Weyrleader to Gennain of Fort during the interval?”

“Who could forget D'viss?”

“Mmm. And Malia's Weyrleader was...?”

“She had two, didn't she? Th'tow and V'sharran.” Sh'vek arched an eyebrow. “I assume this is going somewhere?”

Easing herself back in her chair, Vallenka stretched out her legs and crossed them at the ankle. “Oh yes. V'sharran supposedly surprised everyone by being a fairly decent Weyrleader. Th'tow was a little less so, and D'viss...”

“D'viss was a miserable man, loathed by almost everyone other than Gennain herself. I can't imagine how he ever kept...” Sh'vek checked himself mid-sentence, and thumped a fist on his thigh. “Shard it, _that_ 's the connection?”

Vallenka nodded. “G'dil may be a bigger problem than you think. I'd start readying some transfer papers, if I were you.”

Sh'vek swore, and pushed himself up from his chair. “I need to get back. My duty to Carth, sister.”

She waited until he was halfway to the bowl, then called out a suggestion to her brother's back. “I suppose you _could_ just give Delene some of the attention she so eagerly craves.” The pace of his stride didn't slow, but there was now a stiffness to it that hadn't been there earlier. Smiling to herself, Vallenka sipped at her wine. And Delene thought she'd learned control? The fool girl didn't know the _meaning_ of the word.

 

 

 

Standing at Carth's side, Vallenka uneasily surveyed the twenty-eight eggs lying in their banked nests of sand. For an older queen at this stage in a Pass, in a Weyr full to brimming with fit and healthy dragons, the clutch was far more respectable than most Weyrwomen would dare hope for. But not for her.

No, this was the stuff of Vallenka's worst nightmares.

Red eyed, she leaned against Carth's belly as the queen groaned and strained again. _Easy, girl, it's coming now. Don't force it!_

 _No it isn't!_ Carth snapped back furiously. _It's_ still _not right._ A shudder rippled across her body from shoulder to tail-fork, and she slumped down from her crouch, back onto the sands, breathing heavily.

Vallenka sighed, and gestured for Wissa and Growmor to come back down from the tiered seating. _You WILL let them close, Carth! You must._

Carth had laid the first egg of her clutch almost four days ago. Some queens took longer to clutch than others, but a gap of this length between eggs was never a good sign: the most recent egg the queen had laid had now spent a full two days hardening on the sands. It, like the majority of the others, was noticeably larger than average, and already heavily patterned with striations. The Weyrfolk might be betting on more than half a dozen bronzes in the clutch, but Vallenka wasn't. She knew full well what this meant. In addition to the more obvious physical strains of carrying and clutching so many eggs, large clutches took a more subtle toll on a queen's body, leeching her of the essential nutrients they needed to grow. Older queens and those going through their first few layings were always more at risk of both overly-slackened ligaments and dietary insufficiencies, and the problems they caused – and the stress of losing that fool's fardling bronze had only added to Carth's troubles. She could see it in the eggs already on the sands, in the uneven texture of the hardening shells. Growmor had promised her that the malformations weren't likely to extend to the growing dragons themselves, but Vallenka didn't care in the slightest about _them,_ not while Carth was still in trouble.

The queen still had many more eggs left to lay.

Forcing Carth to expose her lower belly to the air, Vallenka ran her hands across it. She could feel another four eggs at the very least. Carth's skin was hot to the touch, which wouldn't do any good to the rapidly maturing eggs still left inside her. Vallenka hoped it was just from the heat of the sands themselves, and not a sign of a growing infection. Unfortunately, there was no way of telling until she could get Carth _out_ of the Hatching Grounds again – and she knew she'd never manage that before the whole clutch was laid.

Growmor stooped down to the bucket of near-scalding water and briskly soaped his arms clean again, then plunged them well beyond the elbows into the second bucket, brimming with redwort. “I'll do this as quick as I can, Weyrwoman,” he said. “Just keep her steady for me. Wissa, you'll want to stand close.”

The dragonhealer moved to Carth, and carefully extended one arm deep inside her. Vallenka forced herself to watch, reassuring her queen that beastherders did this all the time with their animals, and that Healers sometimes did the same thing to people too, to help birth awkward babies.

_They don't do this to dragons!_

_Sometimes, yes._

_Not to me!_

_Carth, please!_ Vallenka moved swiftly across to Carth's head, so her queen could see as well as feel her. Her own face was reflected redly in every facet. _He_ has _to do this for you._

The dragon rumbled uneasily, but didn't fight back. That fact alone was worrying to Vallenka; Carth had been in pain for several days now, but was her growing lethargy just due to the lack of sleep? Vallenka twisted her head round to glare at the dragonhealer. “Well?” she demanded of his back.

Growmor pulled his hand free, dripping with greenish mucus, and beckoned Wissa forwards. “I can feel the egg now and, as we suspected, it's ruptured. There's another right beside it, and they're both trying to come through together. Wissa, you ought to be able to reach it too – get a feel if you can.” He looked across at Vallenka, his expression sorrowful. “We'll do everything we can, but it's not looking good for the second egg either. And Carth may have already been injured, inside.”

She scowled at him, and turned back to stroke the queen's headknobs. “I know the risks as well as you do. But you can't fix her up again until she's done with the laying. Do what you have to, man.” She closed her eyes, and pulled Carth's mind into closer rapport with her own. _Steady yourself. Wissa will be gentle, and you can tell Helleath if she gives you any discomfort. But you'll break her arm if you move now, and we can't have that._

Carth gave another long sigh, and Vallenka could feel her resisting the urge to push at the eggs once again. She focused her attention entirely on her dragon, not on the mutterings she could hear behind her. Carth didn't need to know any of that right now.

_Well done, love. Not much longer._

_Oh, Vallenka. Don't lie. Just listen to them for me, and be with me when I need you._

Vallenka bowed her head into contact with her queen. _Anything, my dearest._

“I feel something strange a little way beyond the ruptured shell,” Wissa was saying. “I expected some inflammation, but I can't quite tell what this is, and I don't want to hurt her.”

“Thought you might spot that,” Growmor said. “There's some tearing there, and a large clot from an earlier bleed. Can you tell how the hatchling's positioned, or does the collapsed shell mask it too much?”

“I think so. Head and belly closest to us, right? I can make out the wing bones on one side.”

“Right. Now go to the other side, more towards me. Slide your fingers carefully until you find the tear in the shell, and see if you can get a grip on the hatchling.”

“The hole's pretty sma... no, wait. Shells, there's a whole leg come free of the egg there. It oughtn't be bent like that! And what's happened to the other wing?”

“Protruding behind is my guess. Hatchling would've struggled some when its shell gave out.”

“I wonder why it didn't go _between?_ There was no-one for it to Impress.”

 _I was there,_ Carth said sadly. _I tried, and I listened, and I was there for it until it stopped. Tell them to get it out of me, Vallenka!_

_Carth-my-heart, why didn't you tell me that before?_

_You didn't need to know, not then. You do need to now._

_Oh, Carth! Brave, brave, Carth!_ Vallenka gave the queen a fierce embrace, then turned to speak to the healers. “Carth wants you to take the dead hatchling out as fast as you can. It's the nearer of the two, isn't it?”

Growmor shook his head. “Nearest isn't enough. We need to relieve the pressure first, then we can open the shell further, reposition it and get some ropes on it. If we try pulling it clear now, it'll hurt your queen badly.”

“So? Relieve the pressure then. However it is that you do that.”

“Weyrwoman...” Growmor exchanged a brief look with Wissa, seeming uncertain of what to say. In his silence, Carth supplied the answer.

_They must break the other shell. You must listen with me, while we end the hatchling's life._

Growmor took a deep breath, and calmly started on his own explanation. “There's only one option, Weyrwoman. I need your permission to-”

“Break the shell,” Vallenka forced out quickly. “I know. Do it. Don't wait any longer, just _do it_ , and get them both out.” She turned back to Carth, and held her tightly again. In the queen's mind, she felt the pressure of the dragonhealer's hands, a strange tickle at the spilling of egg-fluids as the second egg was forcibly ruptured, then a sudden release of tension as the queen's body eased around it. And then, a different pressure rose in place of the physical one that had just been relieved, a voice both loud and tiny, wordless and desperate. Carth grasped it tight, stilled it with the force of her own mind, begging it to be at ease.

 _Don't move!_ Vallenka pushed her own command towards the fretful, wispy mind of the unborn hatchling. There was no understanding in it, not that she could sense through Carth, but oh, there was strength! Raw emotions – or rather, the precursors to emotions – pushed at her own mind, jagged and tangling and wrong and painful and...

_No, little one. She is not for you. Be at ease. Be still. What you need is not here, can never be here. But you are loved all the same. Be at ease. Be still._

Vallenka wept at what her Carth was doing, marvelling at the grace with which the queen enfolded her dying child. And then, it was done. The queen's keen was no full-throated utterance of grief; merely a quiet, exhausted moan.

The rest of the sad and grisly task was over soon after. Growmor hadn't waited for the second hatchling to expire before attending to the first, and had been able to get it properly positioned and the required loops of rope in place by the time Carth keened. Vallenka forced herself to watch as he and Wissa tugged it free from Carth's body; there were worse ways of removing a ruptured egg, she knew that much. It was hard to tell the colour beneath all the fluids and ichor and the fragments of shell, but the size was enough to mark it as bronze. Vallenka turned back to Carth then, at the healer's request, to keep her from pushing the now-collapsed second egg out until Wissa had cleared the last of the shell fragments out the way. The task grew harder with every contraction that Carth had to suppress, but at last Wissa called out that she was done. Shuddering, Carth gave in to her body's urges, and with a scream of pain she expelled the ruined egg onto the wet and steaming sands.

 _Well done, girl. It's done._ Vallenka wiped at the sweat trickling down her neck towards her breasts, and went to inspect the hatchling they'd been forced to sacrifice. The egg itself was heavily freckled with dark spots and rather long, if not as large as the others on the sands. The small puncture hole made by Growmor's blade had torn further during its passage out of Carth; beneath the tear, a deep blue hatchling lay curled up in perfect stillness.

Vallenka wondered what its name might have been.

 

 

 

Six more eggs followed before midnight, and then, thank Faranth, Carth declared that the clutch was complete. While Vallenka sat vigil over the queen and her eggs, Carth slept, even while the two healers stitched and cleaned her tears, packing her egg-passage with wads of boiled cotton soaked in numbweed and redwort, and other medicines that were supposed to help ease the swelling. When that improved, Growmor had said, they'd be able to tell if Carth had suffered a prolapse or not. Even a minor one could lead to a dangerous infection... and Carth had already suffered enough damage to make infection a very likely consequence. But her temperature _had_ eased somewhat as the night drew on, much to everyone's relief.

Carth slept the following day through, waking only long enough to turn the eggs and to gulp down several barrels of water. Vallenka pushed aside her worries at her queen's lack of appetite; it was quite normal for injured dragons, she knew. If Carth stopped drinking, _then_ she would worry.

Two days later, Carth started claiming that she was too hot and tired to eat _or_ drink.

 

 

 

The next eleven days passed in a blur of sleepless, worried anguish that Vallenka knew would haunt her for the rest of her life. As it turned out, even though the source of the current infection lay elsewhere, in the tearing caused by the passage of the ruptured egg, Carth _had_ also suffered a partial prolapse. Growmor had explained the likely implications while he worked on the necessary sutures: Carth would need rest well beyond the hatching of her now-hardening clutch, and should she feel the urge to mate again, her next flight would have to be low and short. The internal damage itself had most likely been caused by the extreme efforts of her labouring and the natural weakening of her body with age. Vallenka had dutifully praised Growmor for his skill in finding and repairing the damage promptly, but as concerning for the future as the dragonhealer's words had been, her current worries were far more immediate. Carth weakened further with every passing day.

The Weyr itself continued on around her almost as normal, Serreni taking charge of the weyrfolk and K'mallo continuing with his leadership of the Fighting Wings against thread. Her brother appeared again from time to time, but aside from him, she barely spoke to a soul. The hatching grounds were forbidden to anyone other than herself and the healers, and the other three queens on the several occasions when Carth had had to be forced to drink and eat, or to keep her distress from bothering the rest of the Weyr. On the worst day, Carth had been so weak that even the weyrling gold Eljath had been capable of subduing her complaints.

When Growmor hadn't been busy tending to Carth or the injuries of threadfall, he and Wissa had studied the blue hatchling's eggshell carefully, eventually concluding that it had also been malformed. The overly-elongated egg had slipped through behind the egg that preceded it, far sooner than it ought to have done. Whether the subsequent pressures of trying to pass two eggs at once had ruptured the first egg, or if the damage had been done even earlier, he didn't think anyone would ever be able to say.

Carth could have told him the answer. But Carth wasn't talking, not even to Vallenka.

 

 

 

When the change came, Vallenka woke with a start, almost falling off the trestle-bed in the process. Her outstretched right hand found only empty darkness. “Carth?” It took her a moment to orient herself, to mark the position of the fading glowbaskets and to separate the heat of the sands on the one side of her from the heat of Carth's body on the other. She stretched out her left hand, and stroked the queen's flank. _Carth?_

_Vallenka? Did I wake you?_

_Oh, Carth!_

_I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. You're as exhausted as me. But I wanted some water. I only meant to wake the healer._

_You'll have your water, dearest, as much as you'd like._

_I think I might want a wherry, too. But only a small one._

_That's fine, small is fine. Whatever you need, whatever you want._

_Is Narnoth there? Was it him that turned our eggs?_

_..._

_Vallenka?_

_No, Carth. I did that. I had Wissa and Helleath help, too._ Vallenka pushed herself up from the bed, and stiffly made her way around to her queen's head. Carth's nearer eye was whirling a lambent blue, with only the slightest hint of greys and yellows towards the outer rim. _You've clutched enough dragons for me to pick up on what the eggs need. I hope we didn't do too badly at it._

_Not at all!_

_Good. Now, you'll be all right here while I fetch you that water. I'll help you with your eggs again after you've had your fill._

_Thank you Vallenka. Vallenka?_

_Yes?_

_I love you. And I promise I'll never leave you._

_As do I, Carth. As do I._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I am not the first to include a clutching-gone-wrong storyline in a Pern fic, but I can't for the life of me figure out where I first saw something along those lines, except that it was well before I first started writing fanfic (i.e. early noughties). If it was you, your story was fantastic and I'd love to read it again. Please holler!
> 
> ETA: It's not [ this one from Kadanzer](http://www.kadanzer.org/zipfiles/2855/eggbound.pdf), though it does date from the same rough time and is also worth reading. Another detail I (possibly wrongly) remember is one of the healers on hand being a failed candidate, and almost impressing from a mis-laid egg.
> 
> 2nd Edit: Thanks to Multi-Facets, who found the story in question - the one I was thinking of is [Love Rhymes With Goldflight by Notomys](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3336198/1/Love-Rhymes-with-Goldflight). I must have confused the posting date of the first with the plot of this one in my mind, and ended up looking for it amongst stories that were posted well before it was written... The prose isn't as sharp as that of some other fics I've recommended in the past, but the story has got more than enough going for it to make up for that.


	27. Chapter 27

_There once was a Seaholder, bragged of his luck_   
_who set sail in fair weather or foul_   
_braving tempest and threadfall_   
_those terrors most dreadful_   
_and he swore he'd no fear of them all_

_There once was a Seaholder, bragged of his luck_   
_who would sail home, each voyage, holds filled._   
_For the sea was his lady_   
_and he mastered her daily_   
_and he swore that he'd never be killed._

_There once was a Seaholder, bragged of his luck_   
_who set sail on a double-moon tide_   
_with his first mate's young daughter_   
_but the sea claimed and caught her_   
_before he could make her his bride._

 

**Afternoon, 26.2.35,**

**Pel's Sea Hold, Tillek**

   
Cupping her chin in her hands, Rahnis stared vacantly out to sea. No matter how she looked at the problem, every last angle of it explored through seven turns' worth of well-remembered arguments, there was simply no escaping the obvious conclusion.

Vallenka had been right all along.

Before Rahnis had moved north, scarcely a month had gone by at Ista Weyr without _some_ mention of the issue. Alaireth's ancestry was only slightly less limited than Carth's own – the senior queen's parents had been siblings, albeit from different clutches – and Vallenka had urged Rahnis quite vehemently to follow her and Serreni's examples and encourage variety in Alaireth's matings. Junior queens should mate as widely as possible: that was the position Vallenka had always espoused, and she'd certainly led by example on that score. Carth had had seven different mates, five of them over the course of the thirty or so turns of her seniority. Even N'essen, who'd worn Ista's Weyrleader's knots the longest, had led the Weyr for less than half of Vallenka's term.

In principle, it was hard to argue _against_ the idea – Rahnis had seen more than enough breeding of caprines and pack-runners in her youth to appreciate the value of diversity – but on the same basis, neither was it _necessary._ Pinch-points in the breeding population of a Weyr weren't that uncommon at all, particularly within an Interval when the dragon population as a whole went into decline. Of the two to three hundred dragons populating an Interval Weyr, only a score at most would even have the _opportunity_ to breed: the Weyr's queen – or, more rarely, queens – and whatever bronzes were fit for the pursuit. But even if a queen went her entire life only mating with a single bronze, the number and size of clutches during an Interval were equally limited: fifty turns of restricted breeding within an Interval had much the same impact on a Weyr's diversity as that of only five turns within a Pass, or a decade in the run-up to one. Three generations of Istan inbreeding hadn't caused anything like the conformation problems that Fort Weyr had suffered during the previous Pass when Gennain had been Weyrwoman, and the records suggested that the dragons of the current day more than equalled those of the past. And, as far as Rahnis had been concerned at the time, it wouldn't have made much difference to Ista's population if a dragon other than Narnoth _had_ caught Alaireth: all of Ista's fit, young bronzes had been bred out of either Carth or her daughter Minith, and if there were any failings in the line descended from Razinth and Ioth, they were primarily Vallenka's responsibility, not hers.

And so, she'd made her choice. What did it matter if Ista Weyr had lost out in terms of diversity? Diversity wasn't what a Weyr needed most during a Pass. Above all else, a Weyr needed fighting dragons: fit and healthy beasts to sear the skies of Pern free of thread, and if a weyrmated pair had already produced good weyrlings, there was little reason _not_ to encourage the pairing to continue. Gold flights were highly competitive, and only the best of the bronzes managed to win one anyway. Narnoth had caught Alaireth on every occasion bar one; that fact alone ought to have been enough to prove his worthiness. Certainly no-one dared doubt the quality of _Carth's_ clutches. Not that Rahnis had made that particular point very often... at least, not when Vallenka had been within earshot. Eventually, after turns of repeating the same argument again and again, both of them using the same set of facts, they'd finally agreed to disagree. Or perhaps just to avoid both the subject _and_ each other whenever possible, which amounted to much the same result.

Faranth, how naïve she had been!

Narnoth had been a fine dragon. The hatchlings he'd sired hadalways been healthy. But the eggs had also always been noticeably larger than the average. How many more turns could Alaireth have gone without suffering a calamity like Carth had? Five? Ten? To the end of the Pass? Or only as far as her next clutch? Alaireth was a younger queen than Carth, longer in the legs, neck and tail, but it was Carth who had the greater breadth of chest. The enforced small size of Alaireth's clutches would have helped matters in the past: fewer eggs to carry was less of a strain, and the eggs themselves would have benefited from a greater share of the queen's resources during their development. But not all of Alaireth's clutches _had_ been small. The clutch of thirty-two that had produced Eljath had also contained three bronzes; a good number, but the wagering of the weyrfolk had favoured even more. Large, highly patterned eggs boded well for such things. At least, that was what everyone _said_. It didn't make them right. How long would she have continued to ignore the signs, putting Alaireth at risk for no reason other than her own selfishness? She'd already spent _turns_ putting her own pleasure in mating flights ahead her queen's.

Only that morning, Eljath had shared the latest news from Ista Weyr with Alaireth. Carth's condition was improving steadily – if slowly – but even Vallenka had accepted that her queen's mating flights would never again be what they were, and it was doubtful if she would be permitted to mate again at all. At best, that meant forcing the queen to gorge, or restricting the chasing males to browns, and Carth could never stay senior under those conditions. At worst, Carth would be made to chew firestone twice a month. A single bellyful of stone would delay a queen's rising for half a turn. A turn of regular chewing, and she'd be irrevocably sterilised. Rahnis didn't know how she could ever have lived with herself if what had happened with Carth had happened to Alaireth instead.

 _But it didn't,_ the queen insisted _._

Rahnis cast her gaze southwards and, after a few seconds of searching the white-capped sea, spotted Alaireth swimming well out beyond the breakwater. The queen had been enjoying the play of waves and currents while she watched a pod of shipfish frolicking in the surf crashing over the reef. They'd appeared and disappeared several times over the past hour. _Oh my dearest, I know, but it might have._

 _But it didn't. And you weren't selfish, either, so stop thinking that. Besides, I wouldn't_ let _a bronze fly me that_ wasn't _worthy. I'm sure... Narnoth, yes, I'm sure he was the best bronze in the whole Weyr. As charming as Baxuth, as strong as Hieth or Telemath, as fast as Simpeth or Pryanth, and as agile as Trath or Goth. I wonder which of them swims the best?_

A grey shape arced out of the water alongside the queen; the shipfish were back again. Rahnis had swum with them on many occasions back on Ista, but the northern seas hadn't warmed up enough for her liking just yet. Summer and autumn would be better than spring for swimming; maybe then she'd manage to get further than knee deep. Shells, but she _missed_ Ista! Rahnis sighed, and shared some of her own memories of Narnoth with her queen. _Narnoth wasn't half as charming as Baxuth, dearest, but he was a_ lot _more sensible. As fast as Simpeth and Pryanth, yes, but with twice their endurance. And he_ was _a fine dragon, and a good swimmer, too._

_Of course he was. I know that already. I wouldn't have mated with him, otherwise._

Rahnis smiled sadly to herself. It might be as little as three sevendays or as many as five before Alaireth rose to mate again, but the queen's attention was dwelling ever more frequently on the Weyr's bronzes. Rahnis had found herself watching them too, seeing them in a manner that had nothing to do with her own feelings towards their riders. She had her own opinions of the men concerned, their worth as potential Weyrleaders... and, as much as it felt like a betrayal of M'ton's memory, no doubt in her mind over who she would choose, if the choice had been hers alone to make. The snatches of time she and F'ren had spent alone together over the last month and a half had been few and far between, and always seemed to be over too fast, even when they did nothing that stretched the boundaries of mere friendship. When they did... it was becoming harder and harder for Rahnis to mind the sense of guilt that inevitably followed. At first, she'd felt bad simply for wanting another man again. Now, she felt bad for not feeling _worse_. She loved M'ton still, and missed him desperately, but in all honesty she knew she wanted more from F'ren than simple friendship. The problem was, when Alaireth rose, it wouldn't just be a question of who would make the best Weyrleader, or who she wanted in her bed. The man's bronze would sire the next generation of dragons, and that was easily of equal import. What use was a good Weyrleader if the strength of the fighting Wings in turns to come were to weaken in consequence? What use was a strong dragon and a large clutch if the queen suffered in the laying? She couldn't ignore those things, not this time, and if the right choice for Alaireth and the Weyr turned out to be different to what she'd choose for herself, then so be it. Maybe she'd even deserve it, punishment for taking her queen's needs for granted for so long.

A sudden flood of icy-cold water rushing over her bare feet brought Rahnis out of her thoughts, and back to awareness of where she was. She'd volunteered for the sweepride as much to escape her own thoughts as to stretch Alaireth's wings – the queen had genuinely taken to the Tillek skies – but while there was no denying that Alaireth had made the most of the flight, for the rest, Rahnis had failed abysmally.

It had been raining back at the Weyr, when they'd left, but although the weather on the north Tillek coast had been dry and clear, the cold wind blowing down from the north made the air feel even colder than it really was. For five full hours, she and Alaireth had scoured the length of the coastline together, pausing every so often so that Rahnis could rub some feeling into her face again. The queen had disturbed several flocks of wherries nesting in the cliffs near Misty Hold, and had been hungry enough to hunt down as many as she could of the second flock before they scattered. Purely by chance, Rahnis had discovered that the Weyr's previous headwoman, Hendra, had settled there with relatives. She didn't have much success persuading Hendra to return, but she hoped she'd made a good impression on the woman all the same. With luck, some of the woman's more awkward conditions would be well and truly met within the next month or so, and she could try again then.

The rest of the sweep ride had been uneventful and with the queen having fed and bathed too, it surely counted as a fair enough use of their time. They'd passed into warmer air well before reaching Tillek Seahold, which ought to have marked the end of their sweep, but Alaireth had suggested going on just a little further, all the way around the peninsula and into the shelter of the south coast. Pel's Seahold was a small outlying holding of Tillek that barely merited a name of its own. It was usually overlooked by dragonriders who could be sure of a far richer welcome from Lord Maxeny, but today it had all of the sunshine and none of the wind; those and a mug of klah had been more than good enough.

The tide was on the turn now, and the sun-warmed rock-pool where she'd been idly dangling her feet was rapidly filling with fresh seawater. She pulled her feet up, and edged back up the rocks on her backside, scanning the shoreline. If her feel for the tides round this end of Tillek was any good at all, she ought to have a while yet before any more than her feet got wet... but if she waited that long, her path back to the shore would become a lot more treacherous. _Come on, Alaireth. Time to be off, I think. Did you find any more wreckage?_

_No, but the currents are very pleasant. I think we should come here again._

_Yes, but let's pick a warmer day, next time._

Rahnis picked up the empty mug she'd been loaned and rinsed it off in the pool, then made her way cautiously back across the rocks to where she'd left her boots and Alaireth's straps. The quick-growing seaweeds and algae weren't quite as slippery as they'd been on her way out – and even then, they hadn't been half as bad as the slimy fluids of the sea creature that the Weyr had salvaged just over a month back – but the hours of low water could do nothing to make the wide swathes of tiny clinging shells that coated the rocks any easier on the feet. Back on the dry ground close to the hold, Rahnis dried off her feet on the cloth one of the seaholders had loaned her, then pulled on her socks and boots. Alaireth was out of the water now – she always liked to fly a little after a swim, to shake all the water off – but the shipfish were still there, leaping and racing.

“Wondered if she'd eat 'em.”

Rahnis looked round at the old woman who'd spoken. She'd been there all afternoon, sitting virtually stone-still between two piles of nets, twine in one hand and a work-knife in the other. The mended pile was winning now, Rahnis saw. “The shipfish? No, she ate quite recently. Istan fisherfolk say it's bad luck to catch one, and the dragons won't touch them for food, either.”

“Aye, it's the same up here.” The fisherwoman cut off another piece of fibre and knotted it into place. A few quick twists of her fingers, and half the gap in the netting was gone. “You don' catch shipfish, you don' send women to sea on the deep-water ships, and you don' set sail when Thread falls on a two-moon tide. Unless you's hungry, and there ain't no choice 'bout it – or if one of 'em beaches and dies. Tha's not _catching_ – tha's _salvage_. Like your Weyr did, with that big un of the deeps.”

Rahnis grimaced. “You heard?” If she never saw one of those monstrous things again, it'd be turns too soon.

“Aye, ships brought the news o' that. Coulda done with getting the marks for that, Cap'n Pel said, but better it went Weyrwards than be left for Thread. Couldna ate it, no-how. Shipfish, though. _They_ 's got good eating-meat on them, those shipfish, and iffun a man happens 'cross an injured one, why, it's a kindness to kill an' eat it!”

The next piece of fibre was readied and set into place almost faster than Rahnis' eyes could follow, and then the woman's dark and age-swollen fingers were moving again, searching out the next piece of damage to the netting.

“Waste not, want not,” Rahnis agreed. “Do they taste any good? Shipfish?”

The fisherwoman shrugged. “Some like 'em. Some don'. Some say they're best well-rotted, so's the bad luck's had a chance to wash outta the meat. Me, I say fish is fish, ship- _or_ elsewise. Wherry'll be a fine change, Weyrwoman, and Pel's Seahold thanks you for it.”

“Oh, no need. Glad you could make use of it. It would have been wasted, otherwise.” Flocks of wild wherries on the move didn't hang around long enough for a queen dragon to sate her appetite one by one, and after eating three of her four kills, Alaireth had decided that she hadn't been as hungry as she'd thought. “Your hospitality more than earned it.”

“Pel's Seahold knows its duty.”

“I'll be sure to tell everyone that you do.” Duty. Hers was back at the Weyr, and she'd dallied here on Tillek's south coast far longer than she'd intended to. It had been a welcome change, talking to the coastal cotholders and seacrafters, but it was definitely time to head off. If nothing else, the Weyrleader might get back before she did. He and Maenida had spent another day at Ista Weyr, but Maenida would likely be tiring by now, and they weren't likely to stay in the south long beyond sundown. She'd be sure to have a half dozen new jobs to do within minutes of the Weyrleaders' return, but if she left now she might be able to make a decent start on studying the genealogies of the Weyr's dragons... assuming there was nothing already awaiting her attention. At least with Delene and Egritte out of the Weyr arranging the apprentice placements – Faranth, but that battle had taken forever to resolve! – the chances of anything having gone hideously wrong in her absence were minimal.

Alaireth, having picked up on the bent of her thoughts, sent her a burst of amusement. _Something will have happened. Something always does._

 _I hope not!_ But the longer they were away, the more likely the dragon was to be right. Rahnis made her farewells to the old woman and the rest of the fisherfolk, gathered up her flying straps, and rejoined Alaireth on the fish-hold's long, sloping slipway. The crowd of children working on their chores had gone all wide-eyed again in sight of the queen; Rahnis hoped she'd not disturbed the fish-hold's routines too much by her visit. Well, if she had, the old wreckage Alaireth had found during her swim would surely more than make up for it.

Back at the Weyr, the rain was still falling just as heavily as it had been when they'd left. Linnebith hadn't yet returned, and nor had Kiath and Ormaith. Except for Mannifeth on watch by the starstones, the rim was utterly deserted. The wind was blowing from the north today, driving the rain deep into the southern weyrs, and Alaireth told her that a good number of dragons had taken to the Hatching Sands for warmth and shelter. The queen called out a greeting to the young bronze as they descended, fast, towards their weyr, and then called out again as a second dragon launched himself into the air beside them. Rahnis grabbed hold of her straps, leaned out hard to her left, and squinted through the rain at the bronze and his rider. _That's Trath, isn't it Alaireth?_

Smugly, the queen confirmed it. _I do listen to you, dearest Rahnis. Your heart, as well as your mind._

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I a fan of _Dolphins of Pern_? I'll give you one guess.... ;-)


	28. Chapter 28

_A gold egg lies upon the sands today  
and soon the call goes out to bronzes all._  
 _To find a girl fit for the Weyr's new queen,_  
 _to find a Weyrwoman to lead us all._  
 _We leave the Weyr and scour the whole of Pern,_  
 _and, Searching, hasten on from Hold to Hall._  
 _But while my fellows look for inner strength,_  
 _the girls_ I _seek are pretty, pert and tall!_

**  
Early evening, 1.3.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

  
The door to the steam-room swung wildly open. Ch'rewn managed to make it inside before it rebounded, but the other green rider who followed him wasn't quite as lucky. L'nar swore, dropped his towel, and gave the door a hefty kick in the wrong direction.

So much for peace and quiet, and a bit of privacy! F'ren sighed and closed his eyes. He'd had more than enough of Ch'rewn and his clowning around during the afternoon drill. “Close the fardling thing, would you?” he snarled. “You're letting all the warmth out.”

Ch'rewn sniggered, but at least either he or L'nar did as F'ren had asked. A splash and a hiss followed: water striking the heated stone dish that topped the stove. “Much better,” he muttered. The two men settled themselves down on one of the other benches, and for a few wonderful moments F'ren was able to pretend that he was still alone.

It didn't last.

“Didn't think to find you here, sir!”

Irritated by Ch'rewn's breezy tone, F'ren opened his eyes and gave the young rider his best 'did you _have_ to disturb me?' look. “Likewise. You finished quickly.”

“Fifty sacks of firestone, all stacked and ready for you,” Ch'rewn said, as if the chore had been easy work. “Wingsecond A'zad only set L'nar here twenty. We got talking and... well. We figured we might as well share the work, get finished as quick as we could...”

“And shpend the resht of our time more pleashantly,” L'nar said as he sprawled himself across the full length of one of the benches.

Thus defeating the entire purpose of a fifty-sack punishment. He'd given D'barn oversight for Wing discipline until their next shared Threadfall with Fort in four days time, which meant that F'ren would now have to reprimand _him,_ either for missing what had happened out there, or, Faranth help him, for giving Ch'rewn his approval. Setting the problem aside, F'ren glanced across at L'nar. The man's body was visibly bruised, and one side of his mouth was red and swollen. It was easy enough to put the clues together – a rider who'd been punished for fighting, who despite his hurts still had his mind on other men – and come up with a _very_ proddy green.

 _You don't want me to chase Sablath tomorrow, do you?_ Trath asked on cue.

 _No, and don't you dare give her any ideas!_ He was angry enough that he had half a mind to send Ch'rewn right back outside as he was, stark naked, to fill an extra dozen or so sacks to make up for the ones that L'nar must have filled for him...but-

_But that wouldn't be fair, and you know it._

_I know, I know._ There was also the chance that ordering Ch'rewn away might give L'nar the wrong idea, especially now that Ch'rewn had started giving his friend a fardling massage, and he couldn't face that on top of everything else that had... _Trath?_ Please _stop laughing at me._

The dragon made a heroic effort to stifle his amusement, but it was no good; F'ren could still sense it. _Oh, just be out with it then._

_I can't believe you actually took what she said to heart! Or that you could possibly be jealous of the Weyrleader right now. Or those two green riders! It's ridiculous._

F'ren clenched the remains of his left hand into an approximation of a fist, and winced. _She meant what she said about me. I'm a hideous wreck of a man. Sometimes I agree with her: it_ is _a wonder I can look at myself in a mirror._ _And as for what H'rack said about my_ other _hand, he's lucky I_ didn't _show him what else I can use it for._

Across the room, Ch'rewn paused in his work. “Is it bothering you, Wingleader? Your, um... scars? I could always...”

F'ren gave him a flat look, and silently cursed Trath for his lack of discrimination in the greens he chased. “No, Ch'rewn,” he said, standing up and wrapping his towel back around his waist, “they don't bother me at all. In fact, I think I might amputate half of my other hand tomorrow, I like it so much.” Dragging a wake of steamy air behind him, F'ren purposefully left the door wide open as he left the room.

_There, you see? Ch'rewn doesn't think you're hideous._

_Ch'rewn doesn't count._

_And Delene does? Like I said, F'ren, you're being foolish. You're not the slightest bit interested in Delene anyway, and you know how she is._

A cold draught was blowing down the passage that led out to the Lake, and F'ren decided to head for one of the smaller pools inside. Fortunately, the second of the three flooded caverns, the one fed by lakewater rather than directly from the Weyr's springs, was as empty as usual. He slung his towel over the nearest peg, unshuttered the glowbasket, and walked out onto the rocky overhang above the deeper water. F'ren dived in and started swimming circuits one-armed. Progress was frustratingly slow, and the cavern small enough that he couldn't find a decent rhythm. The water grew shallow at the far end, and he soon grew annoyed by the need to choose between cutting the corner off or stubbing his toes – again – on the uneven cavern floor.

 _She wasn't interested in H'rack either, you know,_ Trath remarked in an obvious attempt to improve his rider's mood _. And you should swim in the other direction and use both arms; it'll make you stronger again. Isn't that what the healer said?_

 _I'm swimming this way today._ Trath was right, but F'ren wasn't in much of a mood to listen. He quickly changed the subject back again, before Trath could get it into his head to insist. _Linnebith and Simpeth were clutchmates. That's why Delene wasn't interested in H'rack._

_Yes. None of the queens wish to mate with their close siblings._

F'ren found himself wondering if Linnebith mating with her sire would be better or worse than with her brother. What was it that Rahnis had told him, that Narnoth had been Carth's offspring by a clutch-brother? Was mating with a brother's son worse than with a brother's father? Rahnis would probably know. Either way, after what had happened with Carth, it didn't say much for Delene that she was so eager to entertain the Weyrleader.

_And what would you have done if Delene had asked you to stay, instead of him?_

F'ren came to a spluttering halt in the water, found his feet, and waded over to the shallows. _Oh, all right. I'm being an idiot. A jealous, frustrated idiot._ He sat down in the water, and leaned back against one of the more comfortable rocks. There was a pebble underneath his backside; he scrabbled at it until he managed to dislodge it, then chucked it forcefully across the pool. _You think I should go and speak to Rahnis, don't you?_

_Yes._

F'ren sighed, and slumped further into the water. The air was colder than he'd thought. _I already tried that, Trath. Remember?_ The whole Weyr had been horrified by the news from Ista, and he really couldn't blame Rahnis for taking it so personally. She might never have liked Weyrwoman Vallenka, but it had been her weyrmate's dragon that had sired the problematic clutch. F'ren had thought – mistakenly, as it turned out – that pointing out what a perfect mate Trath would be for Alaireth was a good way of assuaging her concerns about the future. Why risk any of the other bronzes, when she already knew he could sire a good, healthy clutch on her queen? She should have agreed with him, shard it, not chucked him out of her weyr!

Trath snorted in derision. _You said that I'd be a perfect mate for Alaireth. Which I am, but Alaireth's not ready to rise yet. Rahnis was. Why didn't you tell her that_ she _was the perfect mate for_ you _? That's what she wanted to hear from you._

_I thought you didn't remember any of that._

_If you want_ me _to stop remembering it,_ you _need to stop thinking about it. I'm only telling you what you already know. You dismissed her concerns, because you don't want them to be right. If you really want her, and not just a Weyrleader's knots, then why does it matter who catches her queen when she rises? Leave catching Alaireth for me to worry about, and start thinking about how to say sorry for taking her worries for granted. Alaireth says she's still very confused about how she feels._

_She does? She is?_

_Yes! I don't understand it myself, but she says if you ask Rahnis very, very nicely, maybe you'll both be happier. Alaireth says now would be a very good time, if you're not too busy._

F'ren wasn't going to argue with that. _Tell her I'm on my way._ Taking a deep breath, he slipped beneath the water and kicked out for the other end of the pool, using his fingers to feel his way along the bottom. He could sense Trath settling down on his couch for a nap, giving his rider implicit permission to spend as long away from their weyr as he wanted. All the better!

F'ren surfaced half a dragonlength from the pool's edge, to the echoing sound of footsteps slapping on the wet stone. He shook his head to free his ears of at least some of the water that had got in, slicked his hair away from his eyes, and rolled onto his back, intending to float the rest of the way. The footsteps grew louder, then stopped.

“Wingleader?”

F'ren knew that voice. “What is it, Sk'barn?” He tipped his head backwards until the bluerider's face hove into view amongst the flickering patterns cast by the glowlit water onto the sloping cavern wall. The lad looked... it wasn't easy to tell, with his face upside-down, but F'ren thought he looked ill.

“I had another idea,” Sk'barn said. “Wanted to run it past you.”

If that was all, then the odd look on the bluerider's face must have just been down to the angle. F'ren turned back onto his front, and started swimming properly for the edge of the pool. He'd been trying for sevendays to come up with a decent scheme to convince Sh'vek that Sk'barn _wasn't_ the smartest, most reliable rider in his Wing, and it was hardly fair to keep punishing the young man for the mistakes he wasn't making, just to make him look bad in front of the Weyrleader. So far, the best idea he'd had was to get Sk'barn to try solving the problem instead. Hopefully, he had. “Knew you'd think of something,” F'ren said between strokes. Two more brought him to the low rocky overhang where Sk'barn was waiting for him. “So long as it doesn't involve Threadfall, let's hear it.”

“What you said about telling the Weyrleader about what I did. I've been thinking about that.” Sk'barn sat down and dangled his bare legs in the water. “I know you said it was too long ago, and I'd been too smart about it to make it plausible... so I thought, why not make it more obvious? _And_ more recent?”

“So you want my opinion on whether you should try to kill me again.” F'ren gave a wry grimace. “In theory, it might work. But it's not how I hoped to spend the evening, and I can't say I like the idea, not if you want to make it look convincing.”

Sk'barn only smiled. The slightly wild look in the young man's eyes hadn't been a trick of the angle, F'ren realised. Seeing it up close, he decided that hereally didn't like the look of it. “The hard thing will be making it look real, but if it's _too_ obvious, you won't escape punishment,” he warned. “We're trying to keep you in Snowfall, not get you out of it! Faranth, you'd be lucky to stay in the Weyr!”

“Not if he has someone to vouch for him,” D'barn said from the doorway. “He's been with me all evening, haven't you, Sk'barn?”

F'ren let go of the overhang, and let himself drift further back from the water's edge. D'barn didn't look at all happy. But was he coming in on F'ren's plan, or running with one of his own? And whose game was Sk'barn playing? “How much has your son told you, D'barn?”

The wingsecond gave a brittle laugh. “More than I ever wanted to hear from any son of mine. Bad enough that you've spent the last month undermining _everything_ I've done to keep him safe. But the rest! The Weyrleader may have assigned him to Snowfall, but I hold the both of you responsible for what you've made of him.” He dropped his voice to a low whisper, and his face grew stiff and emotionless, with the tell-tale strain of a man holding back from his dragon. “My son, willing to kill another dragonrider! Well, today you'll pay for that.”

Shard it, hadn't Sk'barn told his father that he'd been _forgiven_ for that mess? Wasn't that enough? F'ren's sense of panic grew. _Trath, look for Corhoth and Sacquith. You may need to get to one of them, fast._ But which? _Trath? Ah, shells, wake UP!_

Trath's mind was fuzzy with sleep, but he couldn't fail to respond to his rider's distress. _What? What's that about Corhoth? What's happening? Aren't you on your way to see Rahnis yet?_

If only! _I'm not sure. Best case, I'm about to have the shit kicked out of me for the greater good. Worst case, it won't stop there._

 _THEN GET OUT OF THERE!_ Trath screamed into his head.

 _I'm trying!_ But what could he do? He could make for the steps, but Sk'barn would easily get there first. And if he managed to get past Sk'barn – which was doubtful – he'd still have the man's father to deal with. Neither man was armed, and you could only get so creative with a pair of towels... but who needed any extra weapons when you had plenty of hard stone and a cavern full of water anyway? They had the higher ground and the numbers... but he had Trath. Dragons fought nothing but thread, but if there was nothing a man wouldn't do to protect his dragon, the reverse was equally true. _Sacquith, Trath. Get close to Sacquith. You'll know what to do. “_ He did it for his dragon,” he said as calmly as he could, “to keep Sacquith safe. I wouldn't hold that against anyone.”

“Not good enough, Wingleader,” D'barn said, striding forward to join his son. “Not good enough by far.”

F'ren smiled grimly at his wingsecond. “What did you expect me to do? Ignore what he'd done, and let the poison fester?” But he wasn't going to get an answer; both men were already launching themselves towards the water. F'ren took a quick gulp of air and ducked down beneath the surface, then tried to kick his way back to the side of the pool beneath them before they knew what he was about. A leg connected hard with his ribs, then a few seconds later a hand found one of his ankles and took a firm grip. He twisted and kicked out, broke free of the hold, and swam as hard as he could for the shallows. When the water was only thigh-deep, he surfaced for another breath of air. Sk'barn, it was Sk'barn who'd caught him – but the bluerider was far enough away now that F'ren could stay out of his reach if he was lucky. D'barn, he couldn't see. Which meant... he turned and lunged sideways, but D'barn was already on him.

They struck the water together, but it was the older man who had the advantage, rolling him over and getting an arm around his neck. Moments later, F'ren felt a knee on his chest; Sk'barn had got close enough to aid his father. F'ren kicked out at empty water, and flailed with his arms, to no avail. Slowed by the water, his elbow did little more than nudge D'barn's belly.

Suddenly inspired, F'ren tried to reach round to grab the man where it would hurt him most. He finally found what he was after and grabbed at D'barn, giving him a good twist in the process. D'barn howled with pain and the grip around F'ren's neck slackened just enough. He slid sideways out from under Sk'barn's leg, got his face up high enough to gasp a mouthful of air, and then jerked away just fast and far enough that Sk'barn's fist broke his nose instead of his teeth. The pain was appalling, bad enough that he could barely bring himself to move, to keep fighting... but what choice did he have? Sk'barn's next swing flew wild, the bluerider yelling something incoherent at him, and he managed to duck under it, spinning, looking for D'barn again. Damn the man, was he going _between_ like a dragon? No, just underwater, F'ren realised, as his legs were pulled out from under him.

Unbalanced, he toppled. Sk'barn grabbed at his hair and pushed him all the way under again. F'ren swallowed down a mouthful of bloody water and reached back to try to pull his assailant's hands away. Before he could act, there was a tearing pain in his scalp, and he realised the bluerider had already let go. He pulled himself upright again, backing away through the water as fast as he could. For some reason neither Sk'barn nor his father were pushing their advantage. D'barn shouted something, a few words that might have included 'enough', and Sk'barn's reply sounded a lot like 'let him go', but F'ren ears were ringing, and he hadn't heard either man well enough to be certain. He drew in a painful lungful of air, and swore profusely. “Are the two of you trying to fardling kill me or not?” Sk'barn still looked like he wanted to, but his father was holding him back.

“No, shard it!” D'barn hissed.

 _Of course they're not,_ Trath told him scornfully. _Not while I have Sacquith_. _Neither of them will endanger you now, or he will die with us. Corhoth says you were never in any danger. I don't know if I believe him, but I'm not letting Sacquith go until I'm sure you're safe. Are you very badly hurt? If you are..._

 _I'll live, Trath. I'll live._ Gingerly, F'ren inspected his nose with his fingers, and immediately wished that he hadn't. “What, then?”

D'barn still had tight hold of his son. “Payment. For abusing my son's trust. For putting him and Sacquith at risk, over and over again. Worst of all... for convincing him that he wants to stick with this Wing of yours, Faranth help us all!”

Laughing, F'ren felt the tension ease out of him, bit by bit, dripping like the blood from his broken nose. So, he _had_ earned Sk'barn's trust, at least for a little while. D'barn's too, perhaps, but there was only one way to keep it. _I have the strangest feeling that I've done this before. Let Sacquith go, Trath. Just let him go, then come down and wait for me._

_What?_

“Do it, Trath. Let him go,” he repeated aloud. _Corhoth's telling the truth._ He could tell that his dragon had done as he asked when the fear left Sk'barn's eyes. The young man was shivering, from stress, or the cold, or more likely both. Faranth, he was doing the same thing himself. Shells, but it was cold!

“You know it had to be convincing, if you want to make Sh'vek believe you” D'barn said, shooting him an apologetic look as he helped his son out of the water. “And I hope we scared you, Wingleader. No, I know we did, from Trath's reaction.”

He didn't know whether to keep laughing, or to start crying. “You're fardling right you were convincing. Does this wipe the slate clean between us?”

“No, not yet.” D'barn pulled a spare towel off the shelf, and wrapped it over his son's shoulders. “Go on out to Sacquith, lad, and head up to my weyr. F'ren and I still need to talk, but it won't take long.”

Sk'barn nodded, and limped away. F'ren couldn't help but be slightly pleased that he'd managed to inflict _some_ damage on the young man. “What else?” he asked D'barn.

“Report my son to Sh'vek, as soon as you can. I'll cover for us both. Sh'vek will know I'm lying, but he won't push the issue. But whatever he says about it, I want you to ground Sk'barn, at least until we get the new weyrlings. The falls we'll have coming, I want him out of as many of them as we can get away with.”

“Done.” F'ren was shivering harder now, but he thought he could trust his Wingsecond far enough now to leave the water. “But if that's how you're paying back Sh'vek for putting Sk'barn in my charge, he's getting off far lighter than I did.”

D'barn waded back into the water, and offered F'ren his arm. “I owe you.”

“Funny way of showing it,” F'ren muttered, but he let the other man help him out of the pool anyway. His legs felt heavy, as if the water was pulling down at him as he left it, but he tried not to lean on D'barn too hard. He'd already shown enough weakness for one day. He took the offered towel, and then a second one to dab at his face. D'barn waited until he'd dealt with the worst of it, then gave him a salute. Mad, that's what the man was. Quite insane. Definitely in the right Wing. “What's that for?” F'ren asked.

“Something that my son doesn't need to know about.” The wingsecond leaned close, and whispered in F'ren's ear. “You're going to help me make Sh'vek suffer.”

“I am?”

“Yes. We're going to make you Weyrleader.”

 

 

 

 

F'ren found Rahnis hard at work at R'fint's desk in the Weyrlingmaster's office, almost hidden by the piles of weyrling records she'd removed from their places on the shelves. The room was brightly lit by fresh glows, and the slab of black glass she was using to hold her current record-hide in place gleamed a pretty purplish-blue. She looked up as he came in, and a patch of light of the same colour, refracted by the glass, appeared on her face as she moved. It looked almost like his own bruising had, yesterday. Today, the blues were fading into greens and yellows, but at least the aches and pains were mild enough that he could mostly ignore them. Numbweed was a marvel, but a little discomfort – and the ability to actually taste his food and drink – was far preferable to the utter senselessness of the salve, or the irritating tingling as it wore off. “Hello, Rahnis,” he said, pushing the door closed behind him. “Am I interrupting?”

She set her stick of charcoal aside, and wiped her fingers clean with a damp cloth. “I don't know. Are you?”

How was he to read that? As an instruction to leave? He hoped not; he hadn't any intention of squandering this chance as badly as the last one. “Yes, I suppose so. I would've been here sooner, only...”

“Only you've been busy.”

F'ren grimaced. His report to Sh'vek two days ago hadn't gone quite as smoothly as he'd hoped. As he'd expected, the Weyrleader had refused to take his word over that of his Wingsecond, and D'barn's alibi for Sk'barn had kept the bluerider safely out of trouble. What he _hadn't_ expected was for Sh'vek to punish _him_ for 'confessing to a public brawl'! He'd spent almost the entire night breaking firestone, fought a six-hour Fall on two hours sleep, and then, just as he was settling into his bed last night, had been assigned the late evening watch to cover for a rider who'd fallen ill. Today, he'd been called on to accompany the Weyrleader and Weyrwoman on another of their day-long trips to Ista. Considering that Maenida had slept most of the day and that Carth and Kiath were more than capable of supporting each other, there'd been a surprising number of between-Weyr errands involved. He had, indeed, been busy.

“So have you,” he said, nodding at all the evidence of it on the Weyrlingmaster's desk. He couldn't imagine what she hoped to learn from it all. Faranth, there were only twenty four mature bronzes in the entire Weyr; it shouldn't have taken more than a few hours to learn everything ever written about every last one of them, and he reckoned he could have learned just as much – and several times faster – simply by taking a good look at them all. Not that he was going to mention that to her, of course. “I came to say sorry,” he said quickly, before she could assume anything else.

Rahnis stared back at him silently, and he didn't think he was imagining the emotional walls he could see behind the fixed lips and dark eyes. He crossed the room, and leaned back against the desk beside her. “I saw Carth, today, at Ista,” he said, strangely thankful to Sh'vek for having given him this opening. “She's... she's a shadow of what she was, everyone said, even compared to poor Kiath. And whatever you have to do, to ensure your Alaireth never suffers like that, you're right to do it. And I'll help however I can.”

She knew all that already, of course. Feeling slightly ridiculous under her scrutiny, F'ren looked away. There was a slate on the desk beside him that instantly caught his eyes, a ranked list of the Weyr's bronzes. At the top, Telemath and C'nir. Sh'vek's Ormaith was two thirds of the way down. That was all he needed to know to figure out which end of the list he wanted to find Trath on, but his bronze's name didn't appear until right at the far end, _shard_ it, lumped in with G'dil's Heggith, M'gan's Baxuth, and the youngsters Mannifeth and Danth. Even Pryanth – Pryanth! – was higher up her list. What had she learned, to rank his Trath so poorly? _Had_ it been Seenth's age when she'd clutched Trath's egg? She'd mentioned that such things might make a difference, but he hadn't thought she'd really meant it.

Rahnis was smiling ever so slightly when he looked back at her again. “And how do you intend to help me, F'ren?”

Pretending that he hadn't noticed the slate, he reached past to tug the unrolled hide out from beneath the dark lump of glass, hoping that he might find some more palatable answers on it. The record was in R'fint's hand, dating back seventeen turns: a final performance analysis of a class of weyrlings soon to join the fighting wings. Most of them were dead, now – it had been a particularly unlucky clutch – and none of the survivors rode bronzes. “Weyrling records?”

She gestured expansively at the room. “You're surprised to find such things here?”

He shook his head, and leafed through the next handful of hides in the pile. More of the same, but for more recent clutches. The closest to Trath's clutch was the one he'd already picked up, and what was there to learn from that? Yet another clutch sired by Ormaith on Kiath, with only greens and blues and a single brown still surviving. “I'd offer to help with the reading, but I don't know what you're looking for.”

Plainly unamused, Rahnis crossed her arms, and leaned back in her chair. “Be honest, F'ren. That's not an admission. That's a question.”

There was a note of warning on her face, and F'ren could well guess what it meant. Any criticism of what she was up to, any second-guessing, and he'd be out the room faster than a dragon blinking _between._ Even so... there was purpose in what she'd been doing; surely it wasn't beyond him to figure it out? No, that wasn't why he was here. F'ren swallowed his pride, and his curiosity, and said what he knew he had to. “You're right, I don't. All I can do is trust you and Alaireth to make the right choice. C'nir _would_ make a good Weyrleader. And if....” Shells, but this was hard! He sighed, and did his best not to sound too bitter, trusting that he might still be able to change her mind. “And, if it's what you want... I'll get Trath and I out of the Weyr when Alaireth rises, so Telemath has the best chance of flying her.” There. He'd said it.

Rahnis looked back at him, wide-eyed. “You'd do that? Seriously?”

“If it's what you want on the day.” It certainly wouldn't be through any choice of _his!_

“This has very little to do with what _I_ want,” she said tightly, pushing herself up from her chair.

She'd told him as much the last time he'd tried having this conversation with her, but Trath was right, that was for the bronze to worry about, not him. “I know.”

“Then why are you here, F'ren?” The last hint of her smile had vanished. “What do _you_ want? Is that all you came here to say, or...”

F'ren took a deep breath and caught hold of her hands, and she fell silent. He could sense Trath listening, silently encouraging, but he waited until Rahnis was looking him in the eyes again before he spoke. “I know what I've found in you, Rahnis. What do I want? I want to share your life, and I want a place in your heart to match the one you've carved out for yourself in mine.”

She blinked, her eyes moist, all of F'ren's imagined walls crumbling away. There was no need for him to draw her any closer; she was already there. He circled one arm around her waist, giving her freedom to slip away if she chose. “I want as much of you as I can, for as long as I can, even if it _can_ only last until Alaireth rises. If that's true... I don't want to waste a moment more.”

Her hands slid up his arms, and about his neck. “Then don't,” she breathed.

 

 

 


	29. Chapter 29

_Springtime is coming: the weather grows mild._   
_Melt, snow, and rivers flow wild._   
_Scrub out your Holdings and wash out your clothes._   
_Till, sow, and watch your crops grow._

_Flowers are blooming, their colours so bright._   
_All here delight in the sight._   
_Springtime is passing and summer draws near._   
_The seasons are turning so be of good cheer._

_Skippen's_ Turning Seasons: Spring

**  
Late morning 6.3.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

  
Eyes closed, Rahnis shared her dragon's view of the younger weyrlings drilling five minutes' flight west of the Weyr. Alaireth had claimed the best ground on the rim near the Star Stones, just beneath the peak where the watch dragon perched. But in spite of her position and the acuity of the queen's vision, Rahnis couldn't make out much detail beyond the shape of their formation; even a bronze looked much the same as a green at that distance. Her own eyes wouldn't have done much worse had she been out on the rim herself as well, braving the chill wind with the other curious riders who lacked either the marks or the time to spare for the Nerat Gather... but today it was her turn to tend to Kiath. Maenida's queen didn't offer much in the way of company, but the work kept Rahnis warm, if nothing else. According to the High Reaches weyrfolk, spring had well and truly arrived. Rahnis wasn't convinced.

That aside, at least she didn't have to put up with Delene's chatter. The woman had been particularly irritating over the last few days, and Rahnis had been avoiding her assiduously. Today, thankfully, Delene and Egritte were _both_ out of the Weyr, conveying the loaned and apprenticed weyrfolk to their destinations with the help of F'ass and his Wing. No doubt the pair of them would make some kind of mess out of the job, but Delene had made such a fuss about the Lower Caverns being her responsibility lately that Rahnis had felt quite inclined to leave her to it. With Nerat's Gather also taking place today, Rahnis didn't expect to see Delene back at the Weyr any time soon; she might not have been given the chance to enjoy the Gather herself, but, all in all, it had the makings of a very pleasant day.

Alaireth's attention suddenly heightened, and off in the distance the number of weyrlings halved as the second group went _between._ Rahnis leaned in towards the warmth of the old queen's hide, and circled her oil cloth gently. Each circle was its own count; by the time she reached six, Alaireth's mind had brightened with the knowledge that the eight weyrlings who'd jumped _between_ had all returned to the skies above the Weyr safely.

 _Eight?_ Rahnis asked her queen. _Weren't there meant to be nine in that group, Alaireth?_

Beneath her hands, Kiath stiffened; the queen had picked up on the question she'd directed at Alaireth.

_Who stayed behind?_

Kiath's query was forceful, and aimed at Rahnis just as much as it was at Alaireth. Rahnis found herself witness to an image of the descending weyrlings shared between the two queens, along with a quick, confusing, back-and-forth of questions and answers. She felt slow and dull beneath the weight of Kiath's mind, and it was almost too much for her to follow. It was good, she supposed, that Kiath was showing more interest in the daily comings and goings of the Weyr again, but she could have done without being Maenida's proxy.

Sensing her thoughts, Kiath drew away. Alaireth reached out to her tenderly, soothing the pressure left by the older queen. _Earith says that Winth's rider was hiding how bad his head cold was, because he didn't want to fall behind. Only, he started coughing so much he lost sight of his visual,_ she explained. _The Weyrlingmaster is happy they had sense enough not to jump, but very angry that A'kent lied to him. Winth is flying back straight, and is not to go_ between _until_ _his rider is well again. Kiath agrees that I will speak to him later._

A wise idea. Winth would think twice before letting his rider hide any kind of sickness again. _I should think so too! I'll have a few words with A'kent while you do, assuming there's anything left of him when the Weyrlingmaster's done._

It was always a worrying time, when the weyrlings first learned how to take themselves safely _between._ Of the thirty one dragons from Linnebith's clutch of the previous turn, four had already been lost to their first handful of jumps _._ As horrible as it was to contemplate, that was about as good as weyrling training got. The remainder of the class seemed to have mastered the basics – jumping between familiar landmarks in their own good time – but their training encompassed much harder things than that.

The current drill involved jumping in formation, on the Weyrlingmaster's mark. It was a crucial skill that all weyrlings had to learn if they ever wanted to join the fighting Wings, and a lot harder than it first appeared. Everyone had their own preferred visual for a given destination...but it would have been a rare chance indeed if all of those disparate visuals aligned themselves nicely into the same formation the dragons were flying. To keep your place in the formation, you and your dragon had to balance your own shared visual against an awareness of the positions of all the dragons around you, without turning it into an overly-detailed death trap, and with the flexibility to account for one or more of the other dragons in your formation _not_ being where you expected them to be when you came back out. Then, when you'd managed all that, you had to wait, holding your visual ready, until the order to go _between_ was given. If you got distracted, and jumped without a decent visual, you'd be lucky ever to reappear.

For the most part, formation jumping relied on the dragon's instincts rather than the exact details of the rider's visual, but the rider still needed to provide consistent directions. Learning where the line was drawn between what you had to do as a rider and where things needed to be left to your dragon was something that every pair had to figure out for themselves, through time, practice and no small amount of luck. Today, Winth had been wise enough to stay put when A'kent's visual had gone awry, and the other weyrling pairs had successfully made their jump without them... but such mistakes didn't always end so happily. Everyone remembered what had happened to the unlucky Igen weyrlings fifteen turns ago. Thankfully, losing an entire clutch _between_ was an extremely rare tragedy.

The weyrlings who'd already made their jump were taking turns to catch updraughts off the western rim of the bowl. Alaireth was watching them closely now, and she drew her rider's attention to one of the greens in particular. _Watch how Jadoth flies, Rahnis. See the difference between her and Agylith?_

Rahnis let the images spill into her mind, as the queen focused her facets on the two greens. Agylith was quite large for a green, but well proportioned. She and blue Winth were probably the best looking dragons of the clutch. Jadoth had a pretty head, but from the neck down she was the image of her sire in everything but colour: barrel-chested and long in the wingbones. Like him, she had strength and speed to spare – she was closing on Agylith fast, despite being smaller – but the manoeuvrability that was the hallmark of her colour was decidedly lacking. There was no finesse to her use of wingsail and edges, and Rahnis could almost _see_ the lift spilling out, unused, beneath her wings.

 _Clumsy! s_ he thought to Alaireth as the green tipped sideways out of the flow of rising air, and had to beat her wings heavily to regain altitude. Jadoth was definitely her father's daughter, and just as clearly the descendant of her grandsire and great-grandsire. Rahnis had studied the Weyr's lineages in what was probably excessive detail, but at least she could now recognise with ease many of the desirable traits – and less desirable ones – that had been expressed in clutch after clutch of dragons.

It had been a daunting task, initially. The records for over sixty turns' worth of mating flights for four successive queens – Vixith, Seenth, Kiath and Linnebith – had made a large and awkward pile that she'd thought she'd never see the bottom of. But, once she'd got started, she'd found them relatively easy to simplify; taken back to Vixith's time, there were actually only nine different bloodlines to consider, seven of which descended from Vixith and three different bronzes in various combinations. The eighth had come about when Weyrwoman Perelane, following a dispute with Weyrleader L'sard, had declared Seenth's next flight open to all the bronzes of Pern. J'bick of Telgar's bronze, Oppilath, had won that flight, and they'd held the Weyr until Perelane's death. Only three bronzes still survived from that line: Baxuth, Heggith and Trath, the others having been lost through the usual attrition of training, transfers and threadfall. Linnebith's clutches by Heggith accounted for the ninth group of dragons.

As Jadoth was busily proving in the skies above the Weyr, just like humans and runnerbeasts, some dragons favoured sprints while others were more suited to tests of endurance, and some were gifted with dexterity... while others were _not_. Ormaith and many of the dragons descended from him and Kiath tended towards a stockier build than Rahnis was used to from Ista, with a broad breadth of chest. Their wings were wide rather than long, and the control surfaces of flight were dominated more by the outer parts of the wing than was usual. Speed came from the sheer strength of wings and chest, but without the proportionate agility of a well-bred queen. Linnebith's offspring were more varied. Some of her offspring by Heggith took after her, while others displayed the Telgar ancestry of their sire more clearly. As for the clutches sired by Telemath... where Ormaith was strong and sturdy, Telemath took the trend to extremes; he was quite possibly the heaviest male dragon on Pern. His daughter Jadoth might be fast when it came to sprints on a straight line, but the sharp turns expected of a green during heavy or clumpy threadfalls would surely strain and tire her – just as they did too many of her sisters from previous clutches.

Rahnis had seen the same proportions repeated again and again in the Weyr's dragons under ten turns of age, as well as in Telemath's three surviving full siblings. Such a build was an asset for a bronze or a brown, but not for blues or greens, and they made up the bulk of the Weyr's population. And seeing as how Telemath had sired a full tenth of the Weyr's current fighting strength... well, was it any wonder that the Wings had been performing worse and worse in Fall with every passing turn? It was a pity, really. C'nir was a good man and a better Wingleader, and Telemath had speed, strength and stamina to spare. Look no deeper than that, and almost anyone would say that they were ideal Weyrleader material... but the pair should have been grounded from gold flights turns ago.

Rahnis smiled wistfully, remembering how badly confused F'ren had been by her ranking of the Weyr's bronzes. At first, she'd planned on waiting just long enough to be sure of the sincerity of his ridiculous offer before explaining it all to him, but he'd gone to such lengths to stifle his outraged curiosity that she'd kept the pretence going almost the entire night. When she'd finally told him the truth, he'd declared his intent to make _very_ certain that she didn't have any more lingering doubts... and if she'd actually had any, they'd have been well and truly banished by now. Still, it was Alaireth's decision he'd have to wait for, not hers.

 _Indeed it is!_ Alaireth said. _I like Telemath himself well enough, but I don't think I should want him to catch us. Perhaps Baxuth? Would you indulge me, dearest Rahnis?_

_Baxuth? I'd be indulging you indeed!_

_Or maybe Pryanth? He_ is _a fine looking bronze._

Rahnis almost choked. _Pryanth's almost as witless as his... oh, Alaireth! Don't tease me with suggestions like that! I'd sooner you started flirting with Ormaith!_

Alaireth's mind rippled with silent laughter at the thought, but beneath Rahnis' hands, Kiath rumbled. _I'd sooner she didn't. I don't allow Linnebith to do that, and your queen shouldn't, either. I suppose she must have one of my bronzes eventually, but it won't be him._

“Oh, Kiath! You can rest assured, neither you nor Linnebith need to worry about Alaireth poaching your favourites.” Rahnis broke the queen's contact, and forced out a laugh as she climbed down off her footstool. _How much did she catch? s_ he asked Alaireth, her mind as tightly focused as she could make it.

_Just the bit about Ormaith, that was all, I'm sure._

Well, that could have been worse. Rahnis grimaced, and cursed herself for a fool; she'd rarely had cause to conceal her thoughts from Alaireth, but Kiath was another matter. It was obvious enough when the queen _forced_ their minds into contact, if she wanted Rahnis to hear her thoughts, or simply to have the comfort of a human mind present. But at other times, Rahnis couldn't easily sense the difference between when the queen was listening to her passively, when she was riding her connection to Alaireth, or when she was as deaf to her mind as another's dragon _ought_ to be. It was quite unnerving, really. Setting her soft cloth to one side, she picked up the mop and oil bucket and carried them back to Kiath, humming as she worked. The tune was a mindless round, and she managed to hold two of the four parts in her head, on and off, and very little else. If Kiath _did_ choose to listen in on her again, all she'd get would be music.

The rest of the weyrlings made their jumps successfully, to the approval of both queens. Afterwards, Kiath's interest shifted to the dragons inside the weyrbowl. Pryanth and Baxuth were heading for the feeding grounds, and the queen insisted on moving out onto the ledge to watch them. Rahnis hauled her footstool, mop, cloths and bucket along after her, and tried not to hear the queen's thoughts too loudly. Pryanth and Baxuth _were_ both fine looking bronzes – she couldn't argue with either queen on that count – but the last thing she wanted was for Alaireth to start making any _more_ proprietary comments where Kiath could hear her. Fortunately, the wind picked up enough to drive Kiath back inside again before any of the other bronzes could draw either queen's attention. Rahnis focused her mind on the feel of Kiath's hide, the near-hypnotic motions of her hands and the tune that was now firmly stuck in her head. Up on the rim, the warm sunlight was falling pleasantly across Alaireth's body; it was easy enough to encourage her own queen towards sleep. Slowly, Alaireth's mind faded into slumber. Rahnis was half asleep herself before too long, and Kiath's next thought came as such a surprise that she nearly fell off her step.

_No. Not there. Higher._

Rahnis blinked, stopped humming, and peered up at the queen's hide. Had she really reached Kiath's withers already? She steadied herself and rose onto her tiptoes, and pushed the oilcloth higher. Kiath's urging didn't fade, so she tried to open her mind wider to the queen, let the oilcloth drop, and caressed the golden hide with her fingers. There was no reason at all that the queen should be feeling itchy right there. Her hide wasn't as soft as a younger queen's could be, but there wasn't the slightest hint of dryness, let alone cracking. In fact, the queen was looking in better colour than she had done in quite some time. The days she'd spent in Ista's sun had clearly done her a lot of good.

 _Higher,_ came the queen's instruction once again. _Please, Maenida?_

It was only then that Rahnis realised that she hadn't been the target of Kiath's request after all. Turning on her footstool, she saw the Weyrwoman leaning against Kiath's foreleg, an oilcloth of her own in hand. “Maenida? Should you be up?”

The Weyrwoman lifted her hand from her queen's body to give Rahnis a salute, and said, slurring slightly, “Can't let you girls do _all_ my work.” She swayed on the spot as her eyes lost focus, then smiled. “Kiath says you worry. You shouldn't. I _can_ do this much for my own queen.”

Kiath was right, Rahnis _was_ worrying. At this time of day, Maenida was usually still fast asleep. Had she had less fellis than usual this morning? Rahnis stepped down off her stool, and walked over to Maenida. The way she'd swayed like that... “Did you eat, Weyrwoman?”

A slight frown appeared on Maenida's face, and she started circling the soft cloth on Kiath's hide. “I'll eat when I've an appetite. There, that's the spot, isn't it?”

_Higher._

The Weyrwoman's frown deepened. “Are you sure, Kiath?”

Oh, but this was a hideous thing to witness. Rahnis moved closer to the Weyrwoman, pressing herself against Maenida's back, and took her hand. Slowly, she moved it up and to the right, directly to the patch of skin that had been troubling Kiath all along. Maenida stiffened, attempting to resist the change, but lacking the strength to do any more than that. Rahnis felt more than saw the annoyance on the Weyrwoman's face at her interference, and then the appalled shame as Kiath's palpable relief hit them both.

Maenida's head drooped forwards, and she set to work with the oilcloth with as much gusto as she had in her, her breath coming in rapid gasps. “I can do this much. I can _do_ this much!”

Rahnis let her hand drop, but stayed close enough to be ready to support the Weyrwoman should she require it. Maenida might be sensing her queen properly now – and this particular chore was arguably in both their interests – but really, she was in no shape at all to be up on her feet. Picking her words carefully, she addressed the queen. “Kiath, is Ormaith still at Nerat? I think Sh'vek would be glad to know that Maenida's up and about.”

She got a reply, but not from Kiath. “Sh'vek already knows, Rahnis,” the Weyrleader said from right behind her. He sounded absolutely furious. “Sh'vek knows more than you'd think.”

“Weyrleader!” She spun around and stepped aside, almost stumbling in the process. Rather than wearing Gather finery, Sh'vek was dressed in the full formality of a dragonrider's wherhide and the more intricately looped of his rank knots. Incongruously, he looked in need of a shave.

“Don't jump so; you _are_ wide open to Kiath, you know,” he said. Scowling at her, he took her place behind Maenida, and murmured a reassuring comment in the Weyrwoman's ear.

Rahnis felt her mouth go dry. When had Ormaith brought him back? If Ormaith had been listening in on Kiath... if he still was... Her dislike of the Weyrleader surged inside her, hard and fast. Beside her dragon, Maenida gasped. Rahnis winced in pain as Kiath pushed her forcefully out of their shared mental contact.

Sh'vek looked around, one eyebrow raised in sardonic amusement, then turned his attention back to Maenida again. “I've a few more things to arrange before we leave for Ista, but don't wear yourself out. Vallenka says there's a new fair of firelizards in the area; between them and the local brats, Kiath won't want for attention.”

Maenida's reply was too slurred for Rahnis to make out clearly, but she thought the Weyrwoman had said something about music. Sh'vek's reply confirmed it. “Yes, yes, the Harper'll play for you.” He stepped away from Maenida, muttering quietly to himself. “Fardling Harpers. Time was, she'd have been far more int-” He stopped himself mid-word and gave his head a slight shake, then beckoned Rahnis over.

“Come with me. Council chamber. They'll manage alone for a while, and I think we need to talk.”

“Do we?” She didn't like the sound of that, nor the mood Sh'vek was in.

“Yes,” he snapped.

Heart sinking, Rahnis fell in alongside him, wondering what he was after. The last time she'd been hauled into the council chamber like this had been a few days before the news about Carth came from Ista. Sh'vek had had _questions_ about the hide she'd found for Delene. He'd taken her word for it that the hide had been misfiled with the records from the end of the previous pass. It wasn't even a lie on her part – she'd simply omitted to mention the fact that _she_ 'd been the one to misfile them. This time, though... there hadn't been any major disasters in the last few days, not unless you counted the Mysterious Shrinkage of Egritte's best woollens. The fardling woman _would_ insist on antagonising half the staff! No, she shouldn't think about Egritte now; the woman was annoyance personified, and of all the things that might show up how proddy she was feeling, the headwoman surely topped the list.

“Kiath's looking well today,” she said, lacking anything better to say, and hoping the compliment to his queen might soften both their moods somewhat

Sh'vek's reply was mild enough. “Mmm. It's like you were saying to J'garray the other day. All the queens benefit from the spring sunlight.”

He'd heard that, had he? Good. She was sure that J'garray's comment on Alaireth's colour had been nothing more than empty flattery, but it had seemed prudent to give him a plausible explanation all the same. That, and the ashes she was mixing in with Alaireth's oil were really all she could do to stop anyone picking up on the truth of Alaireth's condition. The last thing she wanted was for the wrong bronzes to figure out which of the queens would be the first to rise. At least Linnebith was close enough to her own season to distract the bronzes from paying Alaireth _too_ much attention. “Ista's climate is doing them both good. Maenida seems more... animated than she has been.”

“Tarkan agreed we could cut down on the fellis faster now,” Sh'vek explained brusquely as he opened the door to the council room for her. “Not that it improves matters much.”

The bitterness was back again, even worse than before, and she wondered if bringing up Maenida and Kiath had been a mistake. She took her usual chair, and waited for him to do the same. Instead, he followed her around the table and stopped behind her. Rahnis stubbornly continued to look directly ahead. Yesterday's klah-mugs had been cleared away and the slates had been stacked neatly in the centre of the table, but the morning cleaning detail had managed to miss half the ring-marks left on the table's surface. She licked a thumb and idly started rubbing away at the nearest one. Her shoulder blades were itching, but if Sh'vek wanted her to look at him, he could fardling well sit himself in front of her. Was he waiting for _her_ to say something? That, she didn't want to do, not in the mood he was in, when anything she said was likely to annoy him further. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction of asking what he wanted, but the silence had grown almost too uncomfortable to bear. Besides, it was either that, or sit there picking at stains all day. “I thought you said you wanted to talk?”

He didn't answer at first, then said in a low, controlled voice, “When were you going to tell me, Rahnis?”

Shells, he was _furious!_ Rahnis swallowed anxiously. When was she going to tell him _what,_ exactly? “I'm afraid you'll have to explain what you mean,” she said.

“Take a guess,” Sh'vek shot back instantly.

So much for playing for time. Rahnis thought fast. He seemed too angry to be merely fishing for information; _I know more than you'd think_ , he'd said. Faranth, she hoped he hadn't figured out that she'd timed it for three months! Was that it? If he had, there was little she could do about it now, but she wasn't going to volunteer that information just because he'd asked her a leading question! But feigning innocence wouldn't work either; clearly, he'd learned _something_ , and even if she had had nothing to hide, a refusal to answer on her part would be unrealistic. _What did he know?_ Whatever it was, she had to say something.

She twisted round on her chair, and hoped that she appeared more exasperated than worried. “If it's about that firelizard clutch G'dil raided, I _did_ tell him that those beaches were interdicted.”

Sh'vek shook his head. “Transparent, Rahnis. As if you didn't know he'd raid the beaches for eggs anyway, _or_ what he intended to buy with them.”

She shrugged. Delene hadn't made any secret of the fact that she'd always wanted a lizard queen. “Are they together again, then? How disappointed you must be!” she said, relishing the opportunity to goad him about Delene and G'dil more than perhaps she should. She was pretty sure that this wasn't the topic Sh'vek had meant to discuss, but she didn't need to let on that she'd understood that, nor hurry him back to the issue.

“What you did with C'nir was bad enough,” he said. “Now, anyone would think you were trying to make _G'dil_ Weyrleader.”

That was, in fact, exactly what she wanted him to think she'd been doing. “You don't like the idea of G'dil as Weyrleader, then?”

“Delene alone is bad enough. The two of them together would be disastrous, and you sharding well know it.”

She did, they both did; that was fardling obvious. The real question was: what would Sh'vek do about it? Before she could stop herself, she said, “I can think of at least _one_ worse choice Delene could make.”

It was a mistake.

Sh'vek's face twisted into a snarl, and he lunged forwards and grabbed her by the collar of her shirt. “Too far, Rahnis!” he hissed. “You go _too_ far!”

Before she knew what was happening, he'd pulled her out of her chair and swung her up against the wall. She instinctively cried out in shock, then clamped down hard on the emotion before she woke up Alaireth; she'd do it if she had to, but if Alaireth got into an enraged dispute with Ormaith, there was no telling what she might say or do... and Rahnis _still_ didn't know exactly what she'd done to anger Sh'vek in the first place. She took a deep breath, and tried to calm her mind. His hands, fisted in her clothes, were pressing uncomfortably hard against her collarbones. Part of her was deeply infuriated by the fact that he'd laid hands on her like that, far too soon... and she was conscious of the fact that the very same part of her was filing the memory away, along with what felt awfully like a sense of admiration. He leaned in harder, and she was just starting to worry properly when his grip on her suddenly slackened, and he let go.

“I am running _very_ short on patience, Rahnis, and I will _not_ be subjected to your opinions on my competence today,” Sh'vek said as he stepped away. He pulled a nondescript piece of folded hide out from a trouser pocket; holding it between two fingers, he offered it to her. “No more games, girl. You'll give me an explanation for this, and you'll do it fast.”

She took the hide from him, her hands shaking, and opened it out. It was a list of names, in Egritte's hand. At first, she thought it might be the final list of potential apprentices, or maybe the skilled workers that the Weyr was intending to loan out to Holds and Halls to offset the costs, but all of the names that ought to be there for that to be true were missing. Panno had definitely been down for the smithcraft, Wellarna for the weaverhall, and Traven and Habbani for the Healers. None of their names were on the list. Nor was Rayne from the laundry, who'd agreed to accompany Wellarna. But _Varral_ was on it, and Dannia, and Krendo, one of the senior herdsman's boys. Oggal was the drudge who'd recently been put on water-rations for pilfering supplies, and Olessy was the prettiest young woman in the Lower Caverns. The other names were less familiar to her, but the headwoman had helpfully added a few notes beside each, even though some were as vague as 'female worker'. Fifty names in total perhaps, but she couldn't see any pattern or purpose to them. Rahnis frowned, and considered the other set of numbers that someone else had added to the right side of each name, ranging from twenty-five to well over one hundred; these, too, made no sense to her. Not ages, they were all wrong for that. Dannia had one of the largest numbers, but so did Olessy.

“Well?” Sh'vek prompted.

She looked up, genuinely confused. “This can't be the list of apprentices and loan-workers, surely?”

“Loan workers... I suppose that's _one_ description. Egritte told me the idea of placing workers in the Holds was your idea. Is that true?”

“Yes, if we could spare them.”

“Explain.”

“Didn't Delene tell....” She let the question die on her lips; Sh'vek's face had taken on a look of glazed exasperation, and that told her all she needed to know. Delene had been growing increasingly conceited recently, and very defensive of her role as acting Senior Weyrwoman. Far from becoming more considerate of the other dragonriders and weyrfolk, she'd taken her increased abilities as yet another sign of her superiority, as if bothering the dragons of others whenever the impulse took her conferred something special on her that made up for her lack of wits. She hadn't been willing to share her final decision on the apprentices with Rahnis, and if relations _had_ cooled between her and the Weyrleader, it wasn't all that surprising that she'd failed to discuss the matter with him either.

“Oh, never mind,” she said, frustrated, and started to explain. “The Crafthalls were pretty united in their reluctance to train weyrfolk. Why waste all those turns of work and expertise when Search and Thread will steal it right back again?”

“I _did_ warn you that they were likely to do that when I first agreed to this scheme.”

“And I said we'd find a way around it if they did. The best we could do was to reach a similar kind of agreement to the ones the Holders have when one of their children needs some kind of training or accomplishment: paid placements with the Crafts for the first turn, with the agreement that they'd take them on as full apprentices if they worked hard enough and showed some genuine talent. Loaning our skilled workers out to the holds, for a fee, would offset the cost. Except, there _aren't_ _any apprentices here to offset_!”

The whole situation was absolutely infuriating. Delene had – unsurprisingly – made a complete wherry's nest of things again. And who did Sh'vek blame for it? Who did he haul in, threaten, shout at? Her! Weyrleader or not, he had some nerve treating even a junior weyrwoman the way he'd treated her today. Uncaring of how he might react, her temper flared, and snapped. “Why did you bring this to me, Sh'vek? You've told me time and time again that Lower Caverns appointments are Delene's responsibility; don't blame _me_ when she ignores all of my advice!”

He glared down at her, fists clenched. “Don't blame you? _Don't blame you!_ Rahnis, I'm prepared to tolerate your games with Delene and the bronzeriders. Even before today, I wouldn't have said I was sorry to see the back of our Headwoman. But when you involve _my_ weyrfolk, putting their well-being at risk merely to _force my hand..._ That, _that_ goes too far! Oh, _don't_ play innocent with me, girl. I know you've spoken to Hendra recently. When, Rahnis? _When_ were you going to tell me?”

“That I'd spoken to Hendra?” Was _that_ what this was really all about?

“Don't be obtuse.” He reached inside his coat, and pulled a rolled and ribboned piece of parchment out from an inner pocket. “When were you going to tell me about _this?_ ” he demanded as he pressed it into her hand.

Rahnis stared down at it; she'd never seen it before in her life. The ribbons were in Bitra's colours. Why Bitra? They had no major crafthalls to speak of; all they cared about was profiting from the work of others. She untied the ribbons and unrolled the delicate document. Bitra's crest was inked onto the top of the page, along with the formal wording of a contract of sale; at the bottom, it had been signed by both Egritte and Bitra's Lord himself. She skimmed the first paragraph, looking for the details of what Egritte had sold him, wondering what possible connection it could have to the list of workers. Halfway through the second, understanding hit her in a wave of abhorrence. “First Egg, no!”

The question she should have been asking herself wasn't _what_ at all. It was _who_.

Profit, that was what the list of names meant to Egritte, and that was the meaning of the second set of numbers. Strong backs, pretty faces, and anyone else unlucky enough to be someone the headwoman disliked. Every single person on that list had just been _sold_ as an indentured worker to Bitra Hold. Rahnis looked back and forth between the list of names and the contract, torn between appalled disgust and sheer disbelief. No wonder Sh'vek was so angry!

“When, Rahnis?” Sh'vek repeated emphatically. “ _When were you planning on telling me_?”

“You can't possibly believe I had anything to do with this! It's... it's obscene!”

“It is, isn't it! Egritte had the gall to tell me that Bitra offered a better price than any other Hold for the loan of our workers, and that their requirements were 'the easiest to meet by far'. As if that was some kind of excuse! She thought that the trade might be made permanent, that none of them would even be missed.”

He snatched the list of names out of her hands, then chucked it aside in distaste. Rahnis watched it flutter to the floor.

“R'nerrem's weyrmate wasn't even willing to leave the Weyr,” Sh'vek continued. “Nuenna thought she was just helping out, until K'pod didn't allow her to re-mount Fadath. If R'nerrem hadn't alerted me to her absence, I'd have been none the wiser.”

Rahnis could guess the uses Bitra would find for women like Nuenna and Olessy, and drudgework would be the best of it. Had Delene even realised? Had _Egritte_? Rahnis felt sick to her stomach; she was pretty sure that the headwoman had known exactly what she was doing. “We have to get them back! All of them!”

“Of course we do. And I've taken care of it already. Cost the Weyr dearly – threadspawned Bitrans! – but they'll all be returned by sundown. I'd rather it was sooner, but R'nerrem didn't find me until four hours from now, while I'm still at Ista, and I could hardly retrieve Nuenna _before_ he'd noticed her absence.”

She looked up, surprised by his admission. “You're _timing it_?”

“Yes. Would you like to know why?” Sh'vek didn't wait for her answer. “For the express purpose of asking _you_ the one question that you've yet to answer! I wanted to _know_ what your involvement was in this, _before_ you acted for yourself. If you'd been planning to make this appalling abuse of my weyrfolk into some kind of coup of your own. Did you encourage what they did today, just to be certain of getting rid of Egritte? Don't give me that look again; you've proved you're manipulative enough for it. Delene will have to be severely reprimanded for this, and as for Egritte, removing her as Headwoman is the least of what she deserves. It's quite an impressive achievement, Rahnis. Now, were you going to tell me what was happening before arranging an heroic, timely rescue, or afterwards? Or do you persist in your claim of ignorance?”

Mutely, she shook her head. Selling weyrfolk to Bitra! The idea was utterly abhorrent. “I swear to you, Weyrleader, _I didn't know_.”

He met her gaze and held it. On the floor, the list of names was scarcely less accusatory. She should have known what was going on, should have been able to step in and stop it before it had got this far. She might not have the authority to demand Delene's or Egritte's cooperation, but she had friends enough in the Lower Caverns, people she could have spoken to, other resources she could have made use of. The fact that she hadn't done so shamed her. “I'll wake Alaireth if you wish Kiath to bespeak her.”

He watched her, silently, for perhaps another minute. “No, that won't be necessary. But don't think your innocence pleases me, Rahnis. If you weren't involved, I have to ask: how long would it have taken you to find out the truth for yourself?”

Alaireth herself couldn't have read her worries better. If R'nerrem hadn't alerted Sh'vek, if the problem had come to light as little as a single day later... the consequences for some of the weyrfolk could have been unforgiveable. “I don't know,” she whispered.

“No. And it's probably for the best that we never found out.” He sighed, and reached out to tilt her face upwards. “Responsibility for a Weyr can be a difficult burden at times, but none of us is meant to bear it alone.”

Rahnis flinched away from his touch. Sh'vek gave a slight shake of his head, then turned and walked over to his chair. He sat down, and gestured for her to do the same. “Sit down before you fall down. You can't have enjoyed that much.”

“No.” She did as he'd suggested, welcoming the solid strength of the chair beneath her. Sh'vek's mercurial moods were unsettling at the best of times, especially when he suddenly remembered his courtesies.

“Egritte _will_ need to be replaced,” he stated very matter-of-factly, as if he hadn't just flamed her hide to char. “Today, if possible. I'd like to know who you would choose.”

Rahnis took a few deep breaths, giving her racing heart a little time to slow. “Hendra, if I could persuade her to come back.” The Lower Caverns still thought well of Hendra, and although she'd only met her once herself, she'd liked what she'd seen of the woman.

“The Weyr won't be going begging to Hendra. If she knows how desperate we are, she'll only throw up more awkward conditions, and you don't have sufficient bargaining power to meet the ones she's already got _._ ”

Rahnis winced; Sh'vek had spoken to Hendra already today, so of _course_ he'd have learned what her conditions for returning would be. She doubted he'd have liked them one bit, or that he'd have given Hendra the apology that the woman would have been expecting when she saw him. “No, that might be a bit much to ask.”

“A _bit_? Ha!” Sh'vek leaned forward on his chair and picked a slate off the pile, and slid it across the table towards her. The basket of chalk stubs followed. “No, Hendra's definitely out of consideration. Think of someone else. A list of potential candidates would be better.”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

She took a piece of chalk and rolled it between her fingers as she considered the problem. Several of the Lower Caverns women might be capable of the role with a little more time and training, but none of them were ideal, nor would they be widely approved beyond their friends and close colleagues. Scarcely a day went by without one work-section being at loggerheads with another. A hasty appointment would only cause trouble, and Rahnis didn't think anyone could be certain of picking the best person for the job right away. What was really needed was time... time, and maybe something like what Weyrwoman Biarta had done at Telgar. P'nilken had managed to win over his entire Weyr well before Ondarth's flight had settled matters.

Rahnis let the chalk drop. “ _If_ it was up to me,” she said, not at all sure how seriously Sh'vek intended to take her input, “I'd leave the position open temporarily. The different work sections can manage themselves well enough most of the time, so long as someone's ready to step in and stop trouble before it starts. But there's too little overlap between them, and not enough breadth of knowledge. Except for Quaiya – and I know she wouldn't take the job on at her age – I don't think anyone has the oversight experience necessary for a Headwoman's knots right now. But what if we brought in an outsider to keep things running in the meanwhile? A steward, or steward in training. Someone who won't play favourites, but with the decision-making experience the Weyr needs. He could work alongside Quaiya – no-one knows the Lower Caverns staff better than her – and a rotating team of the possible candidates for headwoman, one from each section. Half a turn from now, we'd be much better placed to choose the best person for the job, and she'd have ready-made deputies from outside her own section. I think the Lower Caverns would be far happier with any decision made then than they would be with someone selected right now. Delene, too – six months should be plenty of time for her to reach the same conclusions as the rest of us, without her thinking that the choice has been taken out of her hands entirely.”

“Forget about Delene for now. Where would you acquire a Steward? And why not borrow someone from one of the other Weyrs?”

“Traditionally, it's a woman's job. Our weyrfolk won't resent a male steward the way they would one of the women from another Weyr, because they'll know he won't settle here for good. As for where, Lord Wallosen of Ista's Steward is training up one of my cousins. I don't think Senneck is experienced enough himself yet, but Damrel might welcome the chance to leave the Hold in Senneck's hands for a while, even if it's only for a few hours a day. That ought to be enough to cover it. And if Damrel doesn't like the idea, I'm sure there must be a steward or assistant somewhere who would.”

“A Hold Steward.” Sh'vek rubbed at his stubble thoughtfully. “I suppose it might work, at that. I'll speak to him later and, if he agrees, I'll make the necessary arrangements. If not, we'll have to think again. I'll still want that list either way. Get it to me later.”

She let out her breath in a long sigh. As simply as that, the decision had been made, cutting Delene out of the loop entirely. Was this how Sh'vek intended to do things from now on? Rahnis wondered how long Delene would put up with it... and if she caused any trouble over it, how much longer Sh'vek would be satisfied with putting up with Delene. “Will you be running it past Delene?”

“And what good would that do us?” Sh'vek asked scornfully. “I have enough to discuss with Delene as it is, but she can wait until I'm not doubled up on myself any more. Fardling timing. I'm sorry about earlier, by the way. I know you don't need me to tell you how hard timing is on us dragonriders.”

The reminder of the cause of M'ton's death was hardly a welcome thing to hear, and sent a resentful ache of grief right through her. Rahnis channelled it back at him in a petulant reminder. “Delene's still acting Senior Weyrwoman.”

“ _Is_ she. Someone should probably remind her of it again. The message doesn't seem to stick for more than a few days at a time.” He crossed his arms, and leaned back in his chair. “Tell me Rahnis. What would you say if I had Delene transferred to another Weyr?”

“About time?” she answered in a flash, too distracted by her own thoughts to keep a better hold on her tongue. At the top of the table, Sh'vek chuckled. Was he serious about that idea again? Good news for her and F'ren if he was...or was it _too_ good, perhaps? “Although, if you _were_ still thinking of an exchange with Telgar, the Weyr's too late to get Frith's clutch as part of the deal,” she added.

“It can still be done. All you have to do is ask.”

A chill ran down her spine. “You expected a little more from me than that, the last time you made me this offer.”

“Then there's no need for me to remind you,” Sh'vek said mildly.

No need for him to remind _her_? “My memory's longer than you seem to think,” she snapped. “I think you'd have better luck convincing Hendra.”

He gave her a level look. “I've not forgotten your reasons for refusing me, Rahnis. As Weyrleader, I have to place the interests of the Weyr above those of any individual. I regret the necessity of the hurt that Ormaith and I caused you, but I can't say I wouldn't make the same decision again, in spite of the cost.”

She bristled, half rising from her chair, and he raised a hand warningly.

“It's _done_ , Rahnis. Neither of us can go back and change it, no more than we can say with any certainty what would have been otherwise. All we can do is take what we have, and move forwards from here. I'm not asking your forgiveness, I'm asking you to swallow your stubborn, _wher-headed_ pride and do what you _know_ is best for the Weyr.”

“And who decides that _Sh'vek_ is what's best for the Weyr?”

“Why, the Weyr does, of course! Most of it, anyway. I can see you're one of those who still needs some more convincing.” Sh'vek's tone had been flippant at first, but there was a dark look in his eyes, and his voice hardened as he went on. “I didn't expect you to come round right away. I _do_ expect you to start thinking like a Weyrwoman, and that means putting your own grudges aside when the Weyr needs you to.” He rose from his chair and came over to her, and offered his hand to help her up. “You don't need to tell me your answer today. Just give it some thought. You know where to find me when you've decided.”

She couldn't deny that he had a good point, even if he was still blind to the fact that the Weyr would be even better served if he let go of his own grip on power. That was bad enough, but what angered her most was that she could sense that he thought that her own conclusion was inevitable. Silently, she thanked Faranth that she already had a better solution in hand, that it would never come to Sh'vek's alternative. “I'll think about it,” she said as she pushed her chair back from the table. “It's a hard thing you're asking of me, Weyrleader, but you'll have your answer before Linnebith rises.” He could read that however he liked, but she knew how _she_ meant it!

“Good. Off with you now, back to your duties”

Grateful for a clear dismissal, Rahnis made quickly for the door. She had her hand on the latch when Sh'vek called her by name.

“Queens can be unpredictable,” he said as she looked back. “I wouldn't wait _too_ long.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *deep breath* Well, that one got a little bit tense, didn't it!
> 
> If anyone out there IS into non-canon dragon genealogies, let me know and I'll post them somewhere and add a link to the notes. Same goes for the tunes to the heading poems/songs - they exist, and can be shared...I just need to be given sufficient motivation to transcribe them into noteflight or musescore.
> 
> Hendra's condition for returning to the Weyr isn't stated out-right, here or in the preceding chapter from Rahnis' POV, but I hope enough of you could read between the lines and guess that she said she'd only come back if Sh'vek *went*.
> 
> Plot-wise, I hope you were all paying close attention during this chapter. ;-) Aaaaand I'll just delete the rest of this note right now, because I was giving too much away.


	30. Chapter 30

_No matter the knots on your shoulder_   
_It's your dragon that bears you aloft_   
_We all of us lean on each other_   
_We all of us fly with our friends_

_Fly strong, flame true_   
_Dragons brown, dragons green, dragons blue_   
_Fly strong, flame true_   
_Forever together, one heart born of two._

_No matter what colour your dragon_   
_You're part of the Weyr's fighting strength_   
_We all of us lean on each other_   
_We all of us fly with our friends_

_Fly strong, flame true_   
_Dragons brown, dragons green, dragons blue_   
_Fly strong, flame true_   
_Forever together, one heart born of two._

_No matter how strongly or bravely_   
_You fight in the skies overhead_   
_We all of us lean on each other_   
_We all of us fly with our friends_

_Fly strong, flame true_   
_Dragons brown, dragons green, dragons blue_   
_Fly strong, flame true_   
_Forever together, one heart born of two._

**  
Early afternoon, 8.3.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

After four solid hours of threadfighting, the leading edge had at last ceased its advance, heralding that the last threads of the fall were upon them. F'ren took a quick moment to glance at the airspace behind him; the other Wings would encroach on Snowfall's airspace rapidly now, and Trath hadn't yet had word from Ormaith of whether they were to bunch up, or if some of the Wings would get to peel off early.

 _Send Ormaith our status, Trath,_ he told the bronze. _Leading edge is holding firm one klick short of the expected spot. Snowfall is tiring fast, but we've covered for Thunderclap's errors on the overlap and report no burrows, and no casualties._

Was that still right? It hardly seemed possible!

 _It is,_ Trath confirmed, _but Thread still falls. Ormaith says that as we are in such good shape, we are to stay with the leading edge until the last threads of the trailing edge have fallen. Heggith asks if we wish to share and spread ranks?_

A good plan. F'ren had never much liked the way the High Reaches Wings met in the centre of the corridor. Stretching each Wing out across the full breadth of the fall instead of fighting the left and right halves side by side meant a larger area for a Wingleader to keep his eyes on, but it removed the problematic overlap region... and both Wings would share responsibility for the Threads that got through. Snowfall had really shown Thunderclap up today.

There might have been fewer problems recently – in all the Wings, not just in Thunderclap – if Delene had been more accurate in her warnings. Unfortunately, she'd become dangerously overconfident in her abilities, and the dressing down she'd had from the Weyrleader two days previously hadn't improved matters, not that she'd been given half the ticking off that she deserved. What was the point of saying you'd do better at your duties if you didn't know and weren't willing to be told what you were doing wrong in the first place?

No, Delene's earnest vow was about as much use as a smokeless weyrling on the upper levels. No other weyrwoman could bespeak the dragons of other riders, wherever on Pern they happened to be, but surely even the youngest or blindest of the rest of them had a better eye for who was who within their own Weyr! Calling on queens or bronzes was all very well, but if you couldn't accurately pick out a green or a blue in danger, you created more problems than you solved! Many times during the last few falls F'ren had spotted a green or a blue – and brown Condroth, last fall – suddenly lunge out of position in response to one of Delene's warnings. Ragnabath had come to grief with a wrenched wing today, but that was a far less hideous outcome than what had happened to poor H'pen and Zavierth several days previously. F'ren had been blessing his prescience ever since Zavierth's threading. The distraction of Delene paying particular attention to Snowfall over the past few months had finally paid off; she might get the rest of the Weyr's dragons muddled, but not those who flew in _his_ Wing.

 _Does G'dil want to take the central flight, or go low?_ F'ren asked Trath.

_He offers us low._

_Thought so._ Snowfall would get lighter work in theory, but Thunderclap Wing would get the first choice of threads. And as they'd been flying very ragged today... _Nudge Corhoth and Simpeth, and pass the word. The Wing is to get into line, but I want the second shift riders to keep particular watch for clumps. Their eyes are surely fresher than mine are._

Trath banked north to take on a tangled pair of threads that were beyond Puteth's scope, and F'ren waved the green's rider towards the gap they'd left behind them. F'sigger acknowledged him, and the green darted up and away. In the far distance, F'ren saw two Wings peeling away from the fight – Cloudburst and Windfire, unless they'd shifted positions again. Windfire briefly held formation before blinking back to the Weyr, while Cloudburst dropped through the clouds to begin its sweep back up the path of the fall. Then, the dragon's flaming turn completed, Trath led the Wing in its new formation into a dive of its own.

Just as F'ren had expected, the last minutes of threadfighting proved no easier than the first, but Snowfall spent its flame well, in fierce precision that left neither a single thread un-seared, nor a single wing scored. None of the other Wings had done so well, as it turned out, and F'ren was the only wingleader to leave the post-fall de-brief with a smile on his face. It lasted only as long as it took him to reach the ground level infirmary weyrs; twelve of them were occupied, and Linnebith and Alaireth were both in attendance, calming the injured dragons being tended by the healers. Habiniath had visibly dislocated one of his spar-bones, and going by the awkward way two of the greens were holding their wings, there'd been at least two wing-strains, which Chilvith seemed to have compounded with a fractured leg from an overly heavy landing. The rest looked like threadscores of varying severity: some due to poor luck, others due to poor flying. Remembering what Rahnis had told him about the dragons Telemath had sired, he tried matching injuries to clutches. The pattern was far from being clear-cut, but he suspected she was right about them.

Zallackuth was there too; today would be the third time this turn that the scarred brown had donated ichor to another dragon. F'ren tried to guess who the recipient was. The two likeliest were Culgrath and Olansanth; even from several dragonlengths away, it was obvious that Culgrath would never fly again, and Olansanth's colour suggested that she had lost almost too much ichor to survive.

 _How's Zallackuth doing?_ he asked Trath. J'an claimed his dragon _liked_ doing it, that it made up for their limitations in the air – but even if they only flew a single shift these days they were still a part of Snowfall, and F'ren didn't want to see the brown's compassionate nature abused on lost causes. If the ichor _was_ for Olansanth, and the green didn't make it, Zallackuth would be miserable for days. And, he'd probably push the healers to let him donate again far sooner than he should.

_Good. He feels tired, but not overly weak, and he assures me it's just from fighting Thread. I brought him one of the smaller herdbeasts to keep his strength up while you were in with the Weyrleader. He talks to Olansanth with Alaireth. Olansanth doesn't make much sense right now, but Zallackuth says the healers say she'll live. Zallackuth is proud that he helped._

_Tell him he's done well. Earlier, too. I saw some of the threads they flamed, and it was damn fine work. I'll have to catch up with J'an later, once I've got you clean. Ready for that swim?_

High above, Trath launched himself from the rim. _If you'd taken much longer to ask, I'd have started without you._

Leaving the injured dragons behind him, F'ren continued on towards the Weyr's lake. _Without me? You assume I'll be getting myself wet, do you?_

 _You have to have a bath again some time soon._ On the far side of the bowl, Trath completed his plunge into the Weyr's lake, and maliciously shared every jot of sensation with his rider. F'ren flinched at the shock of the icy water on the dragon's skin; the cold was enough to send an achy twinge across his nose and forehead in sympathy, though he could also feel the pleasure it brought to the dragon's tired muscles. At this time of the day, the lake was less crowded than it was right after a fall, and by the time he was done cleaning Trath it would be almost empty. Bronzes always took the longest to clean; a queen might be bigger by half as much again in weight, but they never got filthy with crackdust and char the way a fighting dragon did.

F'ren met up with Trath on the far side of the lake. The waters were colder and deepened faster on that side, and the windblown wavelets carried less of the grey, scummy residues that had been washed off the Weyr's other dragons. The stench of firestone ash was appallingly strong; today's work crew on ash-duty were already hard at work shovelling four hundred dragons' worth of the sludgy grey stuff into carts and barrows, ready for its storage and later sale to the Farm- and Smithcrafts. The Weyr's recently demoted headwoman, Egritte, was amongst them, working off her debt to the Weyr in the worst of the drudgework. She'd probably be as glad to leave next month as the Weyrfolk would be to see the back of her. Ignoring the reek as well as he could, F'ren rolled up his shirt sleeves and set to work on Trath's hide with a wet twist of straw. By the time he was done, he was cold, wet and aching, but at least the only smells left were coming from his own body.

Trath nudged him lightly with his wedge-shaped head. _I said you should swim, too._

F'ren dismissively eyed the riders spilling out of the bathing rooms beside the lake, then glanced speculatively back across the bowl. He'd have to go back there eventually, but the public pools weren't the only ones in the Weyr. _I wonder if..._

 _She's still busy, and it's_ not _your weyr to use without asking._

Later, he promised himself. _You could always ask for me, Trath._

_With Delene listening to every dragon within five lengths of Linnebith? You want me to do that?_

That was another problem with Delene. She'd freely eavesdrop on any dragon she felt like listening to, but if you wanted her to hear _your_ dragon, that was another matter entirely. Perhaps it was good that she was better at keeping the voices out when she chose – she'd become far more useful with the dragonhealers, now that she only needed to listen to one dragon in pain at a time – but otherwise, she only heard what she wanted to hear. Today, it seemed the weyrwoman was in a gossipy mood.

 _Yeah, I know. Guess not. Fardling discretion. I'll be glad when we can dump it_ between. _I suppose I'll just have to make the best of the communal pools after all. Or maybe we could head to the coast?_

 _Sorry, F'ren. You don't have time._ The bronze directed him towards a figure coming his way – D'barn – and then the bronze's mind grew distant as he started bespeaking other dragons.

F'ren swore, and chucked his last straw twist at the nearest rubbish pile. “What's up, D'barn? It had better be important.”

The wingsecond was freshly dressed in clean clothes, his best wherhide jacket and the full lengths of his rank-knots. D'barn looked him over and gave a sympathetic wince before saying, “Corhoth just had word from Baxuth. Weyrling assignments have been finalised.”

“Already? Sh'vek told us to expect them _next_ sevenday.” He frowned at D'barn speculatively; the man had even found time for a fresh shave. “You knew, didn't you?”

D'barn hooked his thumbs into his belt. “Wasn't it obvious? You said to expect some damaging changes; when better than the first time we bring everyone home safe and unscored?”

“Unless it's a one-off fluke. I suppose we should be flattered he thinks otherwise.” F'ren walked over to where he'd left his coat, well out of splash-range from the lakeshore, and stooped to pick it up. His left arm and back were aching abominably, but at least nothing had seized up on him today, not like three days ago when he'd dropped a sack of firestone mid-fall. It made sense, what D'barn had said, but something about it worried him. Sh'vek would be working towards Linnebith's rising, and the earlier he messed with the Wings, the longer the Wingleaders would have to get them in decent fighting shape again. If he only knew what he had to work with, he'd have a better idea of what _else_ the Weyrleader had up his sleeve. There was something more, there had to be. “Corhoth heard it from Baxuth, you said. Has M'gan got his new winglist already then?”

“No, but it won't be long. He ran into R'fint just leaving the Weyrleader. When Corhoth told me Trath was still at the lake, I figured you could do with some warning.”

“Did you have him alert Simpeth, too?”

“Aye. H'rack was just finishing in the pools. If we head off now, we might not be last when Ormaith calls everyone in.”

“Good call. I'll be right behind you.” As D'barn jogged away, F'ren sniffed at an armpit and wrinkled his nose in distaste. At least a run across the bowl wouldn't make him smell any _worse._ He smiled up at Trath. No-one would want today's meeting to drag out any longer than it absolutely had to, not with him in the room. _I'll be back to give you a decent oiling as soon as we're done, Trath. Who were you speaking to?_

_Telemath. He tells me the winglists have been mostly ready for days. The weyrlingmaster argued successfully for a few final changes, that was all._

F'ren set off after D'barn wondering what they might have been, much to Trath's amusement.

_Patience, F'ren. You'll find out soon enough. Ormaith says you are to join the other wingleaders in the council chamber, at your earliest convenience._

He'd long ago learned not to take _that_ instruction literally, and picked up his pace. _Oh, really? I'd better hurry up then. Why don't you ask Corhoth and Simpeth to join you, and start going over the weyrling dragons between yourselves? We'll want to figure out which weyrlings to tap first, and where to put them. I've a feeling there'll be plenty of them, so start figuring out some options._

F'ren caught up with D'barn trudging through the trampled snow close to the infirmary, which was now much quieter than it had been. The healers had moved on to the minor injuries that needed attention, and the two queens had both returned to their weyrs. “Trath's heard from Ormaith?” D'barn said as F'ren came alongside him.

F'ren nodded as he overtook his Wingsecond. He didn't want to be last to arrive, not if he could help it, but he could already see several other men starting up the stairs to Kiath's ledge. He followed G'dil and H'rack up the steps; at the top, M'arsen informed them all that the Wingleaders were to take their usual places in the council room, but their seconds were to wait outside in the hallway.

Inside, the table had been set for nine, not the usual eleven, or fourteen if the weyrwomen were expected to be present. Sh'vek's ornate Weyrleader's chair was alone at the far end; the extra space to either side of it, traditionally occupied by his seconds and the Weyrwoman, had been left empty. C'nir hadn't used one of the Weyr Seconds' seats for a while now, and was sitting at Cloudburst's place, one hand resting on the stack of slates in front of him. M'arsen followed F'ren inside and positioned himself beside the door, leaving Flamestrike's chair empty. That was a good sign: without M'arsen to vote for Flamestrike, it was very unlikely that the Wingleaders would be called on to give their votes on any disciplinary matters today. Sh'vek had had some choice words about some of P'vash and G'dil's riders earlier that day, and F'ren had been surprised that they'd managed to escape the council chamber with their Wings and themselves unscathed. He shrugged off his coat and slung it over the back of the first chair on the right, then sat himself down to listen.

“Everyone here?” Sh'vek drawled.

M'arsen pushed himself away from the wall and left the room briefly. “A'zad's still getting his arm splinted,” he said on his return, “but he's the only absentee.”

“Good,” Sh'vek said. “Well, men. You know why you're here today. R'fint tells me the older weyrlings are ready to join the fighting wings. I'm sure you'll find them to be welcome additions to your Wings, and I can only hope that some of you learn from their example when it comes to following orders with alacrity.”

M'gan was the only man to laugh at the Weyrleader's joke. F'ren hoped the smarmy bastard had some nasty surprises coming his way.

The Weyrleader went on. “We'll get to the winglists shortly, but I'll tell you right now, there's to be _no_ trading of riders.”

Around the room, faces fell. Unofficially, such trading between the Wings was always permissible, unless your name was F'ren and you'd been expressly denied that privilege. It was a pleasant novelty to see the other Wingleaders getting his treatment.

“As usual,” Sh'vek continued, “I've also given permission to R'fint to take the younger Weyrlings out of the Weyr for the rest of the month for extended training on endurance flights, recognition points, and other essential skills. R'fint requested some extra riders to assist and, as Windfire's not getting any of the youngsters, I've agreed that he can borrow some from you, S'kloss.”

F'ren had always thought that removing the younger weyrlings at these times – provided they were of an age to be capable – was a very good idea, and he fully intended to keep it going when he became Weyrleader. Many of the newer riders were likely to die in the next few sevedays, and the next weyrling class along suffered badly from the loss of their peers.

S'kloss leaned forward in his chair. “How many? And do you mind if I ask who?”

“No more than two or three. He has several names in mind. Pick whoever you want from his shortlist.” Sh'vek turned his attention to C'nir. “You can hand the lists out now, C'nir.”

C'nir read out the Wing names one by one, and slid the corresponding slates across the table towards each of the Wingleaders. F'ren eagerly stretched out to pull his closer, and scanned it quickly. Even at first glance, he could see from the missing names alone that it was far more disastrous than he'd expected. _Shaffit, Trath. We'll be flying beneath the Red Star now._

Stifling a groan, he started to read through it more thoroughly. As usual, the wing list began with the bronzes and finished with the greens. Snowfall had unsuprisingly been landed with the sole bronze weyrling, N'tar. The young man would be a handful for sure, but it would be good to have another of the largest dragons in the Wing if he could only keep N'tar from acting up. F'ren moved down to the browns. There were three... no, four changes there. The new browns would have to be brought up to speed very fast indeed. Three of them were weyrlings, but from R'fint's reports he had a good feeling about E'sallan and Meznalth. The fourth, Oelath, was a transfer from Thunderclap. Not such a good addition to the Wing.

F'ren closed his eyes, and passed the news back to Trath. _We've lost P'lok and M'dex, R'dallan and I'ressack. Our bronze and brown newcomers are Oelath and a bunch of weyrlings_.

 _Hieth says they have Barruth and P'lok from us,_ Trath told him in reply _. They also have Lirroth._

 _Really?_ F'ren opened his eyes, and searched the listed blues. _Shells, you're right._ So, St'larna and P'lok were both gone to Windfire, but they'd do well there. G'nedden was gone too, but Sh'vek didn't hate S'kloss enough to send _him_ to Windfire too. St'larna would be glad of that. The replacements were both weyrlings: the two brothers that R'fint had warned him of two months back. There were no extra pairs to take the place left absent by C'tis and Yath, but in a stroke of good fortune, at least Snowfall had kept Sk'barn. The ploy of grounding the bluerider during Threadfall had worked, but he couldn't continue it for very much longer. F'ren knew he'd need him, to help steady the smaller greens. There were six changes there, but he was quite pleased by half of them. Avret was gone – he wouldn't miss her in the slightest – and so was old R'mindro, presumably safely into retirement where his near-blindness wouldn't see any accidents like last month's. As for Tr'laggan...now, who would Sh'vek have Tr'laggan keeping an eye on now? Would it be C'nir or M'gan, or one of the others? He could already hear M'gan muttering to himself in the background, and he didn't sound happy.

“This can't be right!” M'gan said on cue. “Weyrleader, I wanted one of the _young_ browns! I'ressack's older than I am. This won't do at all!”

Ignoring M'gan's increasingly desperate and futile complaints, F'ren returned his attention to his slate, and tried to get the new greens in his Wing straight in his head. There were the weyrlings Lith and Thyvath, and six older pairs. A'desso's Inselth was from the same clutch as Oelath, and Erabelth and Zelayne... hmm. Now they _would_ be awkward to place. Mellora and Jeldenth would probably do well, but only for however long Mellora took to fall pregnant again. Old D'fallick and Selneth had been a fine pair in their youth, but were so far past it these days that many joked the green would've been better named Senileth. The last two were miserable Gr'vorran and Ashaylth, and Weeth and Syalia, a rather useless woman who'd taken a bronze rider's fancy some turns ago and unexpectedly Impressed from the stands. Overall, his Wing was back to the same strength as when he'd first taken it on... but _eight_ of the twenty weyrlings surviving from Kiath's last clutch, four of them bronze or brown? The other Wings couldn't have more than one or two apiece!

 _Telemath says his wing has four,_ Trath said _._

_Does that make you feel any better about our lot?_

_Not really._

_Me neither. Eight weyrlings... and two of the internal transfers are barely more experienced._ He'd been expecting five, maybe six... Snowfall's revised complement was utterly preposterous.

_What are you going to do?_

_What else can I do? I can hardly ask Sh'vek to change it._ M'gan had been slower than usual to realise that Sh'vek had been serious about denying any further trades of riders between the Wings. Chuckling to himself. F'ren leaned back in his chair, and forced a broad smile onto his face. He decided against sticking his boots up on the table; that would be taking things a little too far.

The first to bite was C'nir. “Did we mix the slates up, by any chance?” he asked, brows raised.

F'ren shook his head. “No, this one's mine. The usual mixture. Inexperienced, incapable, intractable... don't tell me you're not glad to see the back of them yourselves...but the Weyrleader seems to think _I_ can make a fighting Wing out of them.” He gave the Weyrleader a lazy salute with his left hand. Would Sh'vek take the hint? Whether he did or not, F'ren had every intention of mastering the latest set-back to his fortunes just as well...somehow. “I'll admit, sir, I'm rather flattered. You have my word I'll do my utmost to prove that your confidence in me isn't misplaced. By the end of summer, I may even find myself leading the best Wing in the Weyr. Again.” F'ren lapped up the appalled silence that met his words, then added dryly, “Provided we live that long.”

For that, he was rewarded with a grim smile from C'nir, and a chuckle from G'dil. The other wingleaders were wise enough to keep silent. The look he got from Sh'vek could have flash-frozen steam.

“I take it _you_ have no complaints, then?” the Weyrleader said.

F'ren shrugged. “You might have left me Avret, at least. Who's she flying with now?”

“Me,” G'dil called out, waving his slate in his hand. “Her and Ludrenne both. I gather you've got A'desso and Zelayne from us.”

G'dil sounded rather smug about the change, and F'ren briefly wondered what Delene would have to say about it. Ludrenne was far prettier than Delene, and arguably easier to please!

“Thunderclap has Avret and Ludrenne, yes,” Sh'vek said, “but _you_ don't, G'dil. Nor the rest of them, either.” He reached into a pocket and pulled something out, which he tossed across the table to G'dil. “You'll be wanting to change your knots for these ones. Right away, please.”

G'dil stared dumbstruck down at the new knots that had landed on the table in front of him. From outside, a dragon bellowed in distress; Heggith, surely, F'ren guessed.

 _It was,_ Trath confirmed. _But F'ren! What happened?_

 _Sh'vek's just demoted G'dil._ The last time Sh'vek had demoted a Wingleader like this had been when F'ren himself had lost Cloudburst to C'nir several turns ago... but at least he'd had some advance warning that it was going to happen. From the looks of things, G'dil hadn't seen this coming at all. Nor had he made any move to touch the seconds-cords, instead staring fixedly down at them as though they were a tunnelsnake likely to bite his fingers off if he got anywhere near them.

“Don't they suit you, G'dil?” Sh'vek asked, his tone dangerously soft.

“Of course they fardling don't! Faranth, Weyrleader you _can't_ ...”

Sh'vek reached into his pocket again. “If you don't like those ones, perhaps you'd prefer these.” He let the second set of knots dangle from his fingers, long enough for everyone to see that they lacked any extra loops of rank, then flicked them into G'dil's face. “Fort _does_ have an opening for a competent Wingleader, but Thunderclap's recent performance has ruled you well out of contention for that option.”

G'dil brushed the wingrider knots off his chest and shoved his chair aside. His face florid with rage, he pulled out his belt knife. F'ren, seeing where G'dil's hand was going, had managed to make it halfway out of his chair by then, although he hadn't quite decided whether it was to wrestle the knife off the other wingleader, or just to get out of his way.

In a quick, jerky move, G'dil cut his knots free from his shoulder, tearing his clothes in the process. He shuddered, his gaze vague and distant, then slowly lowered his shaking arm and stuffed the knife back into its sheath again. F'ren lowered himself back into his chair and quickly checked on the other Wingleaders, trying to guess which of them was helping Ormaith put pressure on Heggith to have his rider behave. C'nir was glaring stiffly at G'dil from his chair; he'd be one for sure. P'vash and S'kloss also looked like they had their minds only half there... as did M'gan, but that didn't necessarily mean much. _Tell Heggith to tell his rider not to do anything stupid, Trath. And if Delene's not listening, tell him privately that G'dil may want to visit with us later._

 _Heggith is furious_ and _distressed,_ Trath informed him. _He submits to Ormaith's authority, but refuses to advise his rider, and stays silent._

“You bastard,” G'dil hissed. He bit his lips in an obvious attempt to control himself, then gave up, and snarled at the Weyrleader. “Two months, Sh'vek. Count 'em. Because when Linnie rises, you'll pay for this, I swear by Heggith's egg!”

Calm and composed, Sh'vek shook his head. “I see no reason why I should be concerned by an empty threat like that! Your _dragon_ 's caught a junior queen a few times. That's all. But if you think the Weyr will permit an incompetent Weyrleader, G'dil, you're a bigger fool than you look.”

“The Weyr doesn't choose! _Delene_ does. And she'll choose _me_ , by Faranth, she will!”

Sh'vek laughed. “Oh, will she? You can buy her as many trinkets and lizard eggs as you please, but you'll just be wasting your marks if you think anyone benefits from it other than her. You're hardly the _only_ man she's bedded recently.” The Weyrleader paused, letting the implication of what he'd said sink in around the room.

F'ren couldn't see G'dil's face from where he was sitting, but judging from the wordless noise of despair the man had just made, he guessed he'd got the message clearly enough.

At the head of the table, Sh'vek smiled again. “You've just _paid_ more for the privilege. Such as it is.”

Apoplectic, G'dil spluttered wordlessly, then turned and stormed out of the room, leaving all three sets of knots behind him. There was a collective sigh of relief as the door slammed closed. It was all F'ren could do to smother his own laugh of delight. _Trath, did you get all that?_ The insult to Delene aside, it was obvious that Sh'vek's scheming still hung on Linnebith. _Shells, he won't know what's happening until we're handing him his transfer orders. D'barn and I will still have_ this _mess on our hands, but at least it'll be the last time Sh'vek'll ever pull a stunt like this._

At the head of the table, the Weyrleader turned his attention back to M'gan. “We were discussing Skyfrost a while ago, weren't we, M'gan?”

M'gan glanced down at his slate, then back at Sh'vek. “I... um... I think I must have misread a few names. Skyfrost Wing looks good. No complaints from me.”

“Good. M'arsen? You can call in the Wingseconds now.”

The brownrider went to the door, and ushered the waiting men inside, where they lined up beside the larger wall-slate.

“C'nir?”

“Sir!” Cloudburst's wingleader responded promptly.

“G'dil's your man now.” Sh'vek gestured at the rank cords lying on the table. “Your choice which of those you let him wear, but you'll speak to me before making any other promotions.”

At those words, the waiting Wingseconds all straightened to attention, knowing that one of them was just about to be made Wingleader. The Weyrleader stood and inspected each of them in turn, as if to give the impression that his decision hadn't already been made. If F'ren was right, he was using the opportunity to test their character, to see how eager they were to prove themselves. Sh'vek's gaze lingered longest on J'garray, and the idiot man started forwards, only to be stopped by a shake of the Weyrleader's head.

Finally, he announced his choice. “T'frick, congratulations. You're High Reaches Weyr's newest Wingleader. Take the Thunderclap chair, and start familiarising yourself with your new riders. You'll have strong support in your wingseconds, and I'll see you get a fresh set of knots by the evening. As for the rest of you... There are a couple more changes to be made before you join your Wingleaders.”

So _that_ was why they'd been left outside. F'ren muttered a curse under his breath.

“St'nebel, W'ryne,” Sh'vek began, naming men under S'kloss and M'gan's commands. “You're switching Wings.”

M'gan might not have got the young brownrider he'd wanted, but he _was_ getting a young bronzerider in W'ryne. F'ren didn't think either man would be too pleased by that, as they'd frequently fought for the attentions of the same women. He'd have found the switch amusing, only by then he'd noticed that Sh'vek was looking right at him.

The Weyrleader wasn't finished yet.

 _Fardling, sharding, whershit!_ F'ren kept his face frozen, and waited for the hammer to fall. With a smile on his face, the Weyrleader obliged.

“P'lindis and D'barn, likewise. J'garray, M'arsen, with me. We'll discuss Flamestrike's weyrlings in my weyr. The air's a little more salubrious there. Wingleaders? I want those weyrlings tapped and flaming before the sevenday is out.”

Sh'vek left the room, his seconds trailing in his wake, and the other Wingleaders followed soon after. F'ren placed an elbow on the table and rested his forehead in the palm of his hand, trying to fight down his dismay. _We've lost D'barn and Corhoth, Trath. P'lindis will be joining us along with the rest of G'dil's rejects. Thunderclap's rejects, I should say._ Sharding _P'lindis!_ The only thing stiffer than the man's joints was his attitude, and F'ren worried that the fact that he'd been a Snowfall rider under old Ev'les wouldn't be a _good_ thing.

Trath was equally underwhelmed. _We'll manage, but I'd rather we'd kept Corhoth. His rider wasn't expecting that to happen, and Corhoth says he isn't sure about having Goth's rider as a Wingleader. They like you much better than him._

F'ren sighed. _Can't be helped. Tell Corhoth they'll be good for Thunderclap, and if they can manage with me as well as they did, they'll have no trouble doing the same with T'frick. And tell him we'll take good care of Sk'barn, too. I think I'll keep him out of Fall until we've got the worst of the weyrlings settled._ And that was a problem that really couldn't wait, not with eight of them to deal with. F'ren pushed himself up from his chair, and gripped P'lindis by the arm in greeting. “P'lindis. Good to have you on board.” It wasn't really, but what choice did he have?

“I should think so too! No one knows Snowfall like I do. Can I see the Winglist?”

As F'ren handed the slate over, H'rack pulled a face at P'lindis' back.

 _Simpeth tells me his rider is not happy,_ Trath told F'ren _. P'lindis still treats him like a weyrling._

 _Well, we've got weyrlings enough for P'lindis._ Not that P'lindis' condescending attitude was likely to be restricted to them, and it boded well for serious problems with his Wing's secondary leadership. P'lindis wouldn't be happy taking orders from H'rack. Faranth, he probably wouldn't take them too well from F'ren himself! Yet another problem for him to worry about, which was almost certainly exactly why Sh'vek had done what he had. _Tell Simpeth I'm aware of the problem,_ F'ren thought to his dragon _._ “We've had a few changes since Ev'les' day, P'lindis.”

“And a few more today. You needn't worry though; a lot of these are Thunderclap dragons, and I can keep them in line. Yes, I know exactly what to do with them. The Weyrleader said he'd be counting on my expertise soon. Nice to know why. He was right! You'll need my help, for sure!”

“Did you still want to meet at the lake?” H'rack asked. He was looking increasingly pessimistic.

F'ren didn't have the heart for it any more. Besides, before he did anything else with his Wing, he knew he needed the time to himself to figure out how best to manage P'lindis. “I need a bath. Give me an hour.” He nudged Trath with an image of his favourite beach in Southern Boll. “P'lindis, you won't be familiar with all of our riders yet. Let H'rack fill you in. I'll find you both in the Lower Caverns later on.”

P'lindis gave H'rack a sour look, and F'ren left them to get on with it. H'rack's brash attitude would rub P'lindis up the wrong way in no time at all, he was sure. He made his way out into the Weyrbowl struggling to contain his dismay. It had taken months – months! – to shift D'barn out of his rigid habits, but at least he'd inspired trust and liking from the other men in the Wing. All P'lindis inspired in anyone was trouble and resentment.

 _It doesn't have to be forever,_ Trath said, trying to reassure him _. When I've flown Alaireth..._

_If, Trath. If. G'dil was just as certain about the future as you are, and look where he is now? You're not the only bronze Alaireth and Rahnis like the look of, you know._

Trath snorted in disdain. _And you know there's more to it than that. You may be right that we don't need to worry about Telemath any more, but I hardly think you should start getting worried about Baxuth and Heggith just because we share a sire. Rahnis likes_ you _, not M'gan or G'dil. And anyway,_ I'm _not going to let anyone else catch her._

_That's good to know._

_I still can't believe you offered to leave the Weyr, F'ren. I'd only have flown straight back here, you know._

_What can I say? I thought it was what she'd want._ Faranth, but it had been a relief to find out that he'd read her list the wrong way round! Trath was right, though: there was no reason to think that he _wouldn't_ soon be Weyrleader. Rahnis thought almost as highly of him as she did of Trath, and his nearest rivals could all be ruled out of serious contention for one reason or another. Sh'vek had done his worst with these latest changes, but it wasn't beyond him to cope with them. By Faranth, Sh'vek would have to deal with changes of _F'ren_ 's making soon enough – starting with a brand new Weyr for Flamestrike's Wingleader. That would be the first. After that, though... the largest change he wished to see was an end to all of this ridiculous shuffling. Back when he'd been a weyrling, when J'bick had been Weyrleader and Sh'vek merely Weyrlingmaster, the weyrlings had been brought into the fighting Wings one at a time rather than all at once. It usually took well over a month to place each individual; in his case, Sh'vek holding him back had stretched the process almost to three. Despite that, he still thought that J'bick's way was a better way of doing things. If you got things right at the start, you shouldn't _need_ to mess around with them later.

As for changing the current Wings... no, it wouldn't serve anyone well to start again from scratch, as much as he wanted to do it. Arranging the Wings to suit himself as a Wingleader would only add to his problems as Weyrleader for the _whole_ High Reaches. Moving the weaker riders around, keeping them unsettled and their Wingleaders disgruntled... even if he only moved one or two of Snowfall's worst, the other Wings would either complain that he was being unfair, or label the action as a sign of weakness.

 _You weren't lying, you know,_ Trath said as he landed in the Weyrbowl beside his rider.

_What?_

_They do sound rather useless right now, I agree, but why shouldn't you make a decent Wing out of them?_

F'ren stopped in his tracks, and considered the idea. He had a Wing made up of the Weyr's rejects in need of better training, the youngsters with more to learn, and old men who'd grown slack and overconfident. A Wing forced to fight in the worst of every fall, where only the strongest and the best – or, perhaps, merely the luckiest – survived. It wasn't a Wing he'd ever have picked for himself, but why shouldn't he still manage to make something good out of it? It wasn't so much worse than when he'd first taken Snowfall on, was it? Why couldn't he make it something even _more_?

“It's _my_ Wing,” he said to himself. His Wing, and, one day soon, it would become the core of his Weyr. Trath encouraged his thoughts onwards and, slowly, he started to get a clearer idea of what he might do with it, what he could make of it. A Wing where he could bring in every one of the Weyr's riders from time to time, to better learn their strengths, and to help them reach their potential. It would be a slow process, passing his riders back to the other Wings only once they'd learned what they could... but before the Turn was out, he'd see Snowfall as the Wing that every rider _wanted_ to be in. A Weyrleader's Wing, fighting in the thick of every fall.

Faranth, but that _would_ be something he could take some pride in!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next update will be some time on Sunday. And I think you know what's coming...


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You should already know some of what's coming (though not the details, not if I've done my job right). You should have been anticipating it right from the very first chapter. You should definitely remind yourself of what's in the tags. 
> 
> Do you need to go and grab your emotional crutch of choice? Not yet. Save it for #33/#34...and take some time to think about whether you want to wait until #35 is posted before you read through the two preceding chapters. That, I think, will be the best time to get over the hump of what's ahead, but most readers should be fine continuing as they are. The wait between chapters will only be a few days.
> 
> Anyway. This is your spoiler-free 'choose not to warn' warning. Consider yourselves warned.

_Fivefold blooms of golden hue_  
 _Dried five weeks in golden sun_  
 _Steep in alcohol until_  
 _Every speck of colour's gone_  
 _Drain and filter, leave to rest_  
 _Until there's only one fifth left._

_Fivefold blooms of golden hue_  
 _Ware the poison of its fruit_  
 _Use it only when you must_  
 _Danger follows frequent use._  
 _Keep the tincture locked away_  
 _Lest the cravings come to stay_

_Fivefold blooms of golden hue_  
 _Five drops for an aching head_  
 _Five times five for stronger pains_  
 _Five times more: a day in bed_  
 _Fellis, friend to gravely ill_  
 _Five times fifty surely kills_

 

**Pre-dawn, 13.3.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

  
Rahnis woke to an empty bed, dislodged bedding, and a cold draught blowing clear past Alaireth's couch, under the inner door and onto her bare toes. She felt her way across the other side of the bed until she found the corner of the quilt, and yanked it back into place. To think that fardling Baxuth had boasted of this weyr being properly wind-proofed! It was dark enough that she might easily fall asleep again, but something didn't feel quite right. It wasn't F'ren's absence – she was hardly accustomed to his presence, and probably slept better alone anyway – and the glow basket beside the bed was still fully shuttered. She blinked, and looked across the room towards the door.

It was open.

In the darkness beyond, Alaireth was still fast asleep; Rahnis could hear the steady whispering of the queen's breathing, and the dragon's mind was calm and formless. Gathering the quilt around her, she slipped out of bed and paced quietly towards the door, trying not to let her annoyance seep through to the queen. Coming and going in the dark of night for the sake of discretion was one thing, but did the idiot man not know how to close a fardling door behind him? She paused, on the verge of pulling it closed. Something felt... no, she couldn't put a finger on it. She was missing something, something important. But what?

Braving the cold stone on the soles of her feet, she made her way outside. F'ren was standing on the ledge, staring out into the misty gloom of morning twilight. She was about to call out to him, when she heard the panicked lowing of a herdbeast, followed by the strident bellow of a large dragon. “What the...”

“Pryanth,” F'ren said softly, without moving a muscle. “Hieth is down there too, and Goth. The rest of the bronzes are still asleep, but they'll be rousing fast.”

“The bronzes,” she echoed, uselessly. “This isn't right.”

He turned to her, and smiled. “Faranth, but it's good to see _you_ acting out of sorts! I know you said you were sure it'd be another sevenday, but you can't argue with bronzes.”

She frowned, then realised he must have heard one too many old-aunty stories about befuddled weyrwomen whose queens rose unexpectedly. The stories had their roots in holdbred virgins inhibiting their dragons until the queens rose anyway, so she'd been told, and certainly didn't apply to any experienced weyrwoman she'd ever met. “You don't believe all _that_ wherry-offal do you?” she snapped at him.

F'ren's smile broadened. “We did give her plenty of encouragement.”

He was probably mistaking her mood for proddiness now. To some extent, it was, but nowhere near enough – even with Alaireth deep asleep, she could sense enough to know for certain that there was no way that the queen would rise to mate that day, or the next, and probably not even the day after that. She pulled the quilt tighter, a sick, hollow feeling growing inside her. “I'm _still_ sure, F'ren. It's not Alaireth rising today. Have Trath check on Linnebith, please!”

Slowly, his face fell. “Linnebith? Flame and shard it, I'm sorry Rahnis, but we flew with her just yesterday, and her colour's nothing close to rising. Did Sh'vek play the same trick with her?” He looked away, his gaze drawn inexorably towards the blooding bronzes. “Faranth, that doesn't make sense, he wouldn't even know heneeds to,” he muttered, running his fingers through his hair in exasperation. “Rahnis, Trath isn't interested in Linnebith.”

Rahnis stared past him at the greying sky to the south east, guessing the time at about an hour after dawn, Istan time. Dragons shifted their diurnal rhythms slowly; perhaps it was all a part of keeping their innate sense of _when_. But for a queen who made a habit of rising early in the morning, who'd regularly been spending those hours away from her home Weyr, and whose rider no longer had anything _physically_ wrong with her.... “I know what Sh'vek's done,” she whispered. She shivered with a cold chill that came from more than just the icy air.

“What?” F'ren demanded.

Before she could answer, there was a loud scuffling of claws, and Heggith appeared on Linnebith's ledge, G'dil and Delene behind him, tugging at one another. Delene's tiny gold firelizard flitted around the both of them, scolding G'dil noisily and darting in here and there to nip at his clothes. Heggith didn't linger long on the ledge; as he launched himself skywards, Delene finally let go of her weyrmate, and spotted Rahnis and F'ren a moment later. Her face was twisted in sheer fury as she strode across Linnebith's ledge and onto the stepped path that connected it to Alaireth's. “You wherry, how dare you! Not fair! _Not_ fair!” Her firelizard ceased her harassment of G'dil and followed after her mistress, shrieking a red-eyed challenge.

Rahnis almost wanted to laugh. She'd been expecting this confrontation for some time now, but she'd never expected to be in the _same_ position as Delene when it happened. Or that she'd be wearing nightclothes and encumbered by half her bedding. Delene didn't look like she'd be easily put off – nor did her firelizard – and with Linnebith also close to rising, it would be all too easy to stir both queens up into a temper should she and the other weyrwoman come to blows. F'ren looming beside her didn't help matters, and she couldn't even move aside, because he was standing on the end of the quilt! She called across to Delene, “It's not Alaireth, shard it!” More for F'ren's benefit than her own – she already knew the answer – she added, “And it's not Linnebith either, is it?”

“Kiath? But Maenida's.... Oh Metza, do behave! I can't think with you screeching like that.” Delene held out her hand and the firelizard wheeled in the air and dropped down obediently to her wrist. “She's overdue for it,” the weyrwoman said, her brows creased in concentration, “but that's because Maenida's illness threw her cycle off. And Maenida still isn't back to normal. Queens _don't_ rise when their riders are injured. It _can't_ be Kiath; you have to be lying!” Delene's look of concentration intensified. A moment later she gasped and started to backtrack rapidly. “But she can't be well enough! Faranth, I have to go! Linnie's waking, she can hear her, _I_ can hear her.”

“Kiath?” F'ren echoed.

“Kiath.” She nodded gravely, and tried to remember what Sh'vek had told the Weyr when he'd announced Maenida's retirement. She'd only heard it second hand herself, and had been in no mood to pay much attention to it at the time... but she didn't _think_ Kiath had been expressly ruled out of contention. _The Weyrwoman was currently unfit to continue her duties,_ he'd said, following it with the traditional statement that _the leadership of the Weyr would be decided by the next queen to rise_. If Maenida was fit enough, and if a dragon other than Ormaith caught her queen... “What will you do, F'ren?”

He laughed bitterly. “That's entirely up to Trath, now. Catch her, he says. She's... shells, I can almost feel her myself. Faranth, Rahnis, I'm sorry, but you and Alaireth will need to leave fast.”

He was right. She couldn't afford to wait any longer. With Alaireth as close as she was, they'd have minutes at most after the queen woke before they'd need to be _gone._ “I know!” The frustrating failure of their plans physically pained her, but now wasn't the time to dwell on it. “Good luck, I suppose,” she said. She kissed him quickly, then followed Delene's example and rushed back into her weyr, trying not to think about what was happening. The loose woollen gown she'd been wearing yesterday evening would have to do. She slipped it over her head, pulled her boots onto bare feet, grabbed her jacket and hurried over to Alaireth's couch. Faranth, she couldn't afford to feel all this anger, or jealousy... or so much thwarted desire! If Alaireth rose as well... no, she _wouldn't_ let that happen! She firmed her resolve, and bit down on her own tongue, forcing herself to feel nothing except her own self. _Alaireth. You need to wake up. We need to leave. Hear me, Alaireth. Just me, nothing else. We're leaving right now. Now._

She repeated the instructions insistently as Alaireth roused. The queen's emotions were a mirror to her own... no, she was the mirror to her queen; her own furious urges were no more than a pale reflection of Alaireth's, but she could sense that they were still driven more by Kiath's imminent flight than by her queen's own needs. She grabbed her dragon's head, desperate to impose her will. _We're leaving. Alaireth, I need you to listen. Hear me. We need to go._ Linnebith would be heading for Nerat as usual, and she didn't want them to end up too close to her either. Was there anywhere on Pern that was far enough away?

 _I'm not leaving!_ Alaireth retorted as she woke up fully. _This is MY Weyr, and you need me. And the bronzes are blooding!_

 _We need to go, Alaireth. You can't rise. I_ need _you not to rise, not today. Another day... another day!_ Rahnis suddenly realised that that was the answer. _Please Alaireth, listen, listen. Just listen to me. We_ do _have to go, but if you can't bear to leave the Weyr, we don't need to! Just jump forwards, a few hours, far enough to get past Kiath's rising._

The queen's mind was almost frantic with rage, but suddenly some part of it shifted, anger giving way to concern. _Yes! You need me here. Rahnis, you need me! And they'll need me too. I have to go!_

Before Rahnis knew what was happening, Alaireth was on her feet and turning for the bowl. “Wait!” she called after her.Rahnis was fairly sure that her queen wasn't suddenly going to decide to start blooding, but if she didn't slow down, she'd be airborne before Rahnis had a chance to get mounted.

Alaireth didn't stop. _Something's very wrong, Rahnis,_ the queen sent. _I'm not there, and you need me!_

“Alaireth, WAIT!” she screamed.

On the ledge, the queen paused, and looked back at her rider. Rahnis staggered as the image reached her: herself, in the bowl outside the entrance to the lower caverns, arms raised high. Calling to Alaireth, hurting, _needing_ her.

 _I'm coming to you, Rahnis,_ Alaireth told her. _You needed to stay. And now you need me. I won't let you down._

 _But it doesn't make sense!_ she thought back at Alaireth as the queen launched.

 _I'm coming,_ Alaireth said again as her wings beat down once, twice. And then she vanished.

Rahnis stared out at the empty air, stunned. Alaireth had gone without her. Gone _between_ times, alone... but she'd gone to _her_ , surely only a few hours ahead. She felt dizzied by the queen's absence. She could still feel her, but the sense she had of her queen was static, mute, like an after image from staring at the sun. “I needed to stay?” she said to herself, “When did I say _that_?”

She looked around the weyrbowl to get her bearings. Ormaith was on Kiath's ledge but the rim and the feeding pens were thick with the Weyr's other bronzes. Dragons of other colours were coming out onto their ledges too, called by their Queen's needs. She hadn't thought Maenida was fit enough for it, but there was no ignoring the fact that Kiath was going to rise and, if Delene's earlier comments were anything to go by, she was going to be very, very loud.

She hadn't thought Maenida was fit enough.

She _still_ didn't think Maenida was fit enough.

Rahnis swore, and took the steps down from Alaireth's ledge four or five at a time, like she hadn't done since she'd been a weyrling at Ista. She went up the steps to Kiath's weyr almost as fast. Ormaith's eyes were whirling red, but he let her past, as did Kiath, standing hesitantly at the entrance to the inner chambers. The queen's attention was clearly torn, between the bronzes outside, and the woman within.

Inside, Rahnis found Maenida sitting upright in her bed, flushed and breathing heavily. Sh'vek was sat in a chair beside her, resting his chin on tented fingers as he watched his Weyrwoman. He greeted her by name as she came in, but didn't look away from Maenida.

Rahnis walked closer. Sh'vek's face was rigid with concentration; Kiath must have been leaning hard on Ormaith. She hoped that was a good sign, but she really couldn't tell.

“I wondered who'd be first,” he said, still without looking at her. “Didn't think it'd be you. Ormaith told me Alaireth left already...only she seemed to be visualising the Weyr. I'm assuming she went _between_ times. Unwise of you, Rahnis.”

“She's safely away from here, that's what matters,” Rahnis said. “How is Maenida? And Kiath?”

“Very much as you see them. Not that you should be here at all. I suggest you leave.”

Rahnis ignored him, and sat down on the bed beside Maenida. The Weyrwoman was mouthing her dragon's name, over and over and over. “Maenida? Maenida, it's Rahnis.” The Weyrwoman showed no sign of having heard her, but Rahnis went on anyway. “Kiath needs to blood, Maenida. Can you feel her? I know she's worried about you, but she needs to blood. Are you holding her here?”

“She's my dragon!” the older woman blurted out, then broke down into gasping sobs. “Kiath, please! Kiath, don't go, don't leave me, Kiath please!”

Rahnis reached out to take her hand. “She _has_ to go, Maenida. Just stay with her, and she'll stay with you.” She hoped she wasn't lying. “You know what to do.”

Footsteps sounded on the stone floor of the weyr. Rahnis turned in time to see M'arsen arriving.

“Weyrleader! C'nir wants to know where they should assemble. Will she be coming out, or-”

“Here,” Sh'vek said, and got to his feet. “But not before she's blooded. Kiath's will may need to be forced, if Maenida can't control her.”

M'arsen nodded. “I'll have Pellenth tell them, sir,” he said, and hastened away.

Kiath screamed an ear-splitting challenge, and the Weyrwoman whimpered. Her eyes were closed and between moans she was whispering Kiath's name again. As Rahnis watched, she started to twitch and shake. Faranth, that wasn't a good sign!

She looked up, and met Sh'vek's eyes. “How _could_ you let this happen! Hasn't Kiath chewed firestone recently?”

Sh'vek's mouth tightened. “Too late for that now, Rahnis. I did warn you.”

“Where's Tarkan? We can't give her fellis now; what else did he say to do? Faranth, she's....” Her attention caught by a change in the Weyrwoman, Rahnis looked back down at Maenida. The shaking had stopped and she was breathing more smoothly, but her eyes were still closed. Kiath called again, and Maenida's hand tightened on Rahnis.

“Kiath!” Maenida gasped. Her eyes opened, sightlessly; for however long she managed it, the Weyrwoman was at least in full rapport with her queen.

Rahnis rose, and walked around the bed to Sh'vek. A cascade of hideous implications was growing inside her head. “Sh'vek, however much control she's got now, however much Ormaith is helping, it won't last! It won't, and what'll happen then? This could kill her! Shells, why am I bothering with _could_? No stress, the healers said, or she'll have another relapse. Look at her! She's barely managing even now, without any of the physical exertion and excitement of the flight. And even if she copes with the flight, what's going to happen when Kiath gets caught? You think anyone's going to be thinking clearly soon, enough to hold the two of them together? You think they'll last the flight, on their own, without another queen to bolster them?”

Sh'vek looked at her steadily. “Not a question you should have asked of me... but, no, I don't.”

His answer stunned her. She'd thought him too caught up with Ormaith's lust to have realised what would surely happen to Maenida and Kiath. He _couldn't_ have realised! Allowing this flight to continue to its inevitable conclusion meant a death sentence for the queen and her rider – as well as for whichever dragon caught her... if she even lasted that long. “You don't think they'll last the flight either? Sh'vek, there must be _something_ we can do to stop her rising! It's too late for firestone now, but don't the records say anything, give any ideas? She hasn't started blooding yet, can't we....” She stopped, struck by the look on the Weyrleader's face. He _did_ know.

And he didn't care.

“I can't hold Ormaith back from blooding for much longer,” he said, his voice cold and calm. “All the other bronzes have made their kills. There's no more reason to wait.”

“We have to _stop_ this, Sh'vek! Can't you see what this means? It's not just Maenida and Kiath we could lose! If _Ormaith_ catches her, he'll-”

“Ormaith? Ha! I'm not such a fool. We'll be long gone by then. The Healer Hall, I think. As you said, Maenida's in no state for this. But who knows, perhaps the Healers can help?”

At this stage, any Healer he brought back with him – even if he left now, and timed it back to the very second he'd departed – would be useless. The only advantage of going would be to spare Ormaith from the price of victory; likely, that had been his intent all along. “You think you can take Ormaith away from here, _now_?”

He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. “She's pulling at him, but I won't let him blood, and Kiath never bloods before him. Habit is strong. He won't be completely enthralled by her until she has, so until then, we can still leave. After that, she'll do what she must, and every bronze in the Weyr will chase her. Just not us.” He got to his feet, and went to fetch his coat from a hook set into the wall beside the door.

“Don't you even care that she'll die!”

“Care? Oh, I care.” Sh'vek bit out the words. “The Maenida I loved should have died _months_ ago. You've seen how she is, Rahnis. This life, it's... it's pitiful, and it's torture for the both of them. There's nothing more to be done. If she has to die, let her serve our Weyr doing so. She'd have wanted that, back when she was still the woman I loved.”

Rahnis lifted a hand to her mouth and turned away, sickened. He was wrong though, that there was nothing to be done. There _was_ one thing she could do. One thing that could save two lives, though not poor Kiath's, and certainly not Maenida's. On the bed, the Weyrwoman was rigid with concentration, and there were tears running down her cheeks. Rahnis hoped, desperately, that the woman had been close enough to Kiath that she hadn't heard any of what she and Sh'vek had just said.

There was a jug of water and two cups on the table. Rahnis filled one a little way and drank from it while she waited for Sh'vek to leave. He kept his eyes absently fixed on the door while he was buttoning up his coat, muttering to his dragon under his breath, and didn't even glance back at Maenida once before leaving. As soon as he was gone, she crossed to the dresser, and unstopped the vial of fellis. There ought to be a marked spoon for it somewhere close, but she couldn't see it right away. Then again, properly measured doses were redundant, now. Rahnis shrugged and poured the full contents of the vial into the cup, and swilled it around. Outside, Kiath shrieked in rage, and Ormaith – at least, she guessed it was him – bellowed back. Sh'vek would be struggling to control him now; he'd be lucky to get away at all. She had a short time in which to act, between Ormaith leaving and the remaining bronzeriders arriving but, Faranth willing, it would be long enough.

“What are you doing, Rahnis?”

She spun around to see M'arsen standing in the doorway. “I'm doing what I have to, Faranth forgive me!” Rahnis said, forcing herself to walk back towards the bed. She didn't want to be doing this, but what other choice was there?

“Is that _fellis?”_ he asked, aghast.

“Someone has to do this,” she said, sitting down on the bed beside Maenida. “Sh'vek didn't have the guts. Unless you want to do it, that leaves me.” Her voice broke on the last words. Her eyes were burning with unshed tears, and she couldn't stop herself from trembling in horror at what she was about to do. Some might argue that it would be welcome euthanasia for poor, tormented Maenida – not herself, but others might – but for Kiath, the only accurate word was _murder._ She was about to murder a queen dragon of Pern.

“Shard it, he said you might try to interfere, but I never thought he meant this!” M'arsen hissed furiously. “You'll stop right now, Rahnis.”

“Make me,” she said, raising the cup to Maenida's lips.

The brownrider moved fast. Before she'd had a chance to make Maenida take a single sip, M'arsen had knocked the cup flying from her hands and pushed her forcefully back against the bed, a hand already at her throat. She saw it arc through the air as she fought him, spilling its contents onto the furs, and then everything was falling, falling, falling....

 

 

 


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That song R'fint requested before laying into Delene in the bonus scene I posted earlier in the week? You'll find it here. ;-)

_Only a green, I hear them mock,_  
 _As if they know her worth._  
 _Her flame is short, her wings are small,_  
 _She'll mate with any blue at all._  
 _Her wits are as sharp as her memory's long..._  
 _But oh, they do her wrong._

_Only a green, yes, only a green,_  
 _Say I who knows her worth._  
 _Only a green can match her flight,_  
 _Can turn and dive so fast, so tight_  
 _Only a green can fight without fear:_  
 _Courageous and daring when death is near._  
 _She hasn't an equal at all in this Weyr._

_My one, my only green._

  
**Late morning, 13.3.35**

**Red Butte, Keroon.**

  
H'koll's first thought as Ruarnoth brought them out of _between_ was one of relief; each one of their eight weyrlings had successfully made the jump back from Keroon Hold with them, still in perfect formation. The Red Butte rose high into the sky ahead of them, just as he and they had pictured it, beautifully lit by the early morning sun.

His second thought, the merest of instants later, was one of panic.

Butte and ground and sky and weyrlings tilted wildly, his innards shifted, and Ruarnoth dropped like a stone.

_Sorry, H'koll!_

She rolled as she fell, wings tucked tight against her side. She'd come out of _between_ like that, H'koll realised. He caught a brief glimpse of the weyrlings again as they tumbled...and the interloper in their midst, bronze Draslarth, who Ruarnoth had sensed following them out from _between_ into airspace that overlapped far too closely with their own.

 _Sharding deadglow weyrling...urgh._ H'koll nearly lost his breakfast as Ruarnoth twisted, angling one partially opened wing to catch the air and abruptly shifting the momentum of her roll into what became, two sickening rotations later, a well-controlled dive. She opened out her other wing with steady control, her trailing edges spilling only as much air as necessary in order not to strain tendons through the force of her deceleration, and then converted her speed into a graceful, gliding ascent. _Wow, Ru. Nicely done._

 _It was nothing,_ she replied.

_What went wrong with Draslarth? He wasn't meant to jump with us!_

_Earith says Draslarth's rider didn't use the visual the Weyrlingmaster gave them._

_That doesn't mean he needed to use ours!_

_He didn't want to wait for the second group, either. He thinks bronzes should always go first. I like bronzes well enough, but that's just silly._

_Bet he won't say that when it's this class's turn to ferry stone to the upper levels. What in Faranth's name is up with Th'landry? This isn't his first mistake today._

Ruarnoth rumbled. _Won't be his last. They think_ between _is easy._

For some weyrlings, it was. Draslarth and Th'landry, taking their position as a bronze pair very seriously, had excelled in most of their training so far and were definitely in that group. But, it didn't mean they knew everything. _They might be getting bored by the pace, but they'll be making their_ last _mistake very soon now if they're not careful._

 _So Earith has told them. He asks everyone to return to land. He says_ between _drills are finished for the day._

Ruarnoth turned on her tail-tip, and headed back towards their group of weyrlings. They'd scattered away from each other after Draslarth's surprise arrival, but someone had had the sense to get most of them coordinated into a circling flight a few lengths beneath their arrival altitude, just as they were supposed to do. Two stragglers had already started their own descents back to the weyrlings' camp at the foot of the Butte; H'koll sensed Ruarnoth checking on them, and then commending the other six.

 _Winth called for the holding circle,_ she told him _. They've listened well today._

H'koll raised an arm as Ruarnoth drew level with the weyrlings, and beckoned them to peel off behind Winth and follow him down. _Progress at last!_

Back on the ground, H'koll made a thorough check of his straps before dismounting. He'd have bruises across one hip from where one of them had dug in through the leather of his trousers, but they'd withstood the stresses of Ruarnoth's tumble as well as he could have hoped for – there was a slight tear along one of the lines of the stitching and a pale streak of pulled leather on the primary neck-strap, but the decision on whether he could get away with repairs or if he'd have to cut a whole new set of straps could safely wait until nightfall.

 _No more aerobatics until then, girl!_ he warned Ruarnoth. He slapped her affectionately on her neck, and looked around for Draslarth; wherever the bronze weyrling was, the weyrlingmaster wouldn't be far away. He found them all – Th'landry and Draslarth, R'fint and Earith, and also O'reb and Mannifeth – in the lee of a rocky outcrop to the west of the campsite. This class coming from a seventh-month hatching, Draslarth was already well over half his eventual adult size, but he was still substantially smaller than the Weyrlingmaster's brown and O'reb's bronze. The adolescent bronze crouched between them, looking cowed, mirroring his rider's downcast pose.

R'fint waved the weyrlings away as H'koll joined them. “Sharp girl you have there. She heard them coming through?”

“Aye. Gonna need new straps from it, likely.”

“Better that than new wings.” R'fint glared at the backs of the departing youngsters and shook his head. “They've not been themselves all day.”

“Is it just cockiness? Or something more than that?” Two days ago, word had come from the Weyr that greenrider Alla had succumbed to the injuries she'd sustained the previous day, during her very first threadfall as part of the fighting wings. P'vash had only had the one weyrling pair to worry about in Deluge Wing, and it was an almost inexcusable loss. She and Favrurth had been popular characters in the weyrling barracks, with the younger weyrlings as well as with their own clutchmates. Sparing them the more grisly details of her injury, R'fint had warned the current class that Alla and Favrurth's deaths were likely, hoping that it might soften the blow when it fell. Even so, when the news eventually came, several of the weyrlings had been very distressed. Th'landry hadn't suffered as much as some of his peers, but grief could catch up with people at different times and in different ways. “Might be a reaction to Alla?”

“It's not that,” O'reb said, with more certainty than H'koll would've expected from the young man. “I'll keep an eye on him, shall I, Weyrlingmaster?”

“Do that, please.”

“Huh,” H'koll muttered. He'd hoped Th'landry wouldn't turn out to be one of the cocky ones. “So what now? The 'boring repetition is good for you' lecture, and more visual and memory drills?”

R'fint looked thoughtfully away into the distance. “No,” he said at length. “I'd like the dragons better occupied. We'll bring tomorrow's schedule forwards. You and St'larna can start readying the threads.”

An hour later, he was back in the air again, two leather skips slung to either side of Ruarnoth's neck. The contents – the product of five evenings of finger-knitting by the weyrlings, soaking in a wet soup of klah dregs, charcoal and grease – sloshed messily with every stroke of her wings, and Ruarnoth already had dark lines of staining running down the sides of her neck. Two lengths beneath her and twenty to the south, the weyrlings were ready to begin their first formation passage. H'koll reached down and grabbed a handful of wet woolen 'threads'. They would have been of no use for flaming drills – and this class was still a long way from those – but for teaching awareness of falling thread and the patterns of injury which resulted from scores, they worked just fine.

His first thrown 'threads' fell unimpeded past the weyrlings, Winth dodging particularly nicely. The first hits came on the second pass: B'risten caught two with his throws, trailing edge and neck, and R'fint directed the more seriously 'scored' victim to land. The drill continued, one or two dragons dropping out after each passage; by the end, every weyrling would have a mock-injury to be studied and treated. H'koll managed to give Agylith a very thorough lacing with his penultimate handful of threads. _Who next?_ he asked Ruarnoth, hoping to find another easy victim before it became his turn to catch the strays.

 _Draslarth is_ still _very distracted,_ Ruarnoth said.

 _Gotcha!_ H'koll thought, reading his dragon's intent. Ruarnoth called out to Lirroth to take their place, while at the same time flying close enough for H'koll to make his throw. As the 'threads' fluttered away she banked into a steep spiralling descent. H'koll chuckled to himself, knowing that he'd be perfectly placed to see Th'landry's face when the 'threads' hit his dragon mid-spine; the lad and his dragon were both utterly oblivious to what was coming their way, being far more concerned with nothing in particular off to the north west.

And then Draslarth unexpectedly and unpredictably bellowed and back-winged heavily. The sodden wool fell unnoticed ahead of the pair, while Ruarnoth was forced into her second emergency evasion of the morning. _Not left not left not left!_ H'koll thought hastily at his dragon, but by then the full weight of his body was straining against one of the already damaged parts of Ruarnoth's harness. He grabbed hold of her fore ridge, hard, as the leather started to give, and hooked his right leg around the near-empty skip. The remaining contents spilled out over his chest and face in a stinking, filthy mess, but at least he hadn't come completely unstuck. _Fardling weyrling error!_ he cursed himself as Ruarnoth righted again. _Tell Earith we're heading down. Can't wait for new straps now. And ask him what in Faranth's name is UP with those two today?_ Overhead, Draslarth was still a fixed point in the sky, beating his wings in place, and screaming, red-eyed, at nothing at all.

Minutes later, H'koll got his chance to speak to R'fint in person. While he'd been unbuckling Ruarnoth's straps to figure out which parts would need immediate replacing, Draslarth had been escorted down to the ground, and was once again under the watchful eyes of Earith, Mannifeth and now also B'risten's Janguath.

“How bad are those straps, H'koll?” the Weyrlingmaster demanded as he came over.

Wincing, H'koll proffered the offending strap. R'fint wasn't looking very pleased with him. “Here. Wasn't expecting to need to do that, sir. Know I set a bad example up there.”

The Weyrlingmaster turned the length of leather over in his hands, flexing it to observe the tear as it splayed apart, then giving it a gentle tug. “Glad you know it. I assume you have a spare set?”

H'koll nodded. “Back in my weyr. I'll fetch them right away, if that's all right.”

“Do that. You'd have been in worse trouble without those cross-stitches. We'll make a proper lesson of it tomorrow.” He passed the strap back to H'koll and looked away, back towards Earith and Draslarth and the others. “Right now though, I want you back at the Weyr. Damn proddy dragons.”

Proddy dragons? The first of this clutch's greens wouldn't rise before summer. He lifted the looped lengths of Ruarnoth's straps over his head and settled them across his chest with a frown. “Bit early, isn't it?”

“Very.”

“You think one of the girls has been messing about with Th'landry?”

“Shells, no!” R'fint exclaimed, giving him a sidelong glance. “If only that _was_ the problem. Thought we were far enough away not to pick them up, thought we had at least another sevenday or two more to wait in any case... but it's not been a good turn for luck. O'reb's bronze had hints of it before we left Keroon Hold, and Draslarth _would_ be the next one to pick it up when the bronzes started blooding. One of the queens is rising, back at the Weyr.”

“Really?” H'koll's brows lifted in surprise. _Looks like I've just lost five marks on the date, Ru, but I might still get lucky on the bronze._ Shells, it'd be good to have someone new running the place, even if Trath didn't bring in any winnings for him. Ruarnoth would be happier with that, too. “That happened fast. Linnebith's never risen this early in the turn before. Draslarth picked up on the catch?”

R'fint shook his head. “No, and no. It's _Kiath_ that's risen, and she's letting half of Pern know about it. Scorch it, Sh'vek _told_ me he'd deal with it. He used to be a weyrlingmaster himself, so there was no reason for me to insist on helping her through the chewing. Too late for it now. Flight only just started. That's what had Draslarth going, up there. Can't take the weyrlings back, can't leave them alone while she's broadcasting, and I'd rather not let on to everyone how badly I feel about this.”

H'koll couldn't understand why R'fint was quite so concerned. Kiath might be being louder than usual today, but what they were picking up out here in Keroon was far less than what they'd have experienced on any other occasion back at the Weyr. Queens didn't rise as often as greens did, but rise they did and the Weyrfolk learned to live with the consequences. Weyrlings, still new to their relationship with their dragons, were often more responsive to the queen's influence than older riders were, and sometimes the odd green might rise for her first flight earlier than she would have done in result. But it was a known issue, it happened, and you dealt with it. So R'fint had told him, anyway. “This lot _are_ too young to start rising, aren't they?” he asked. And, even if they weren't, there was still time for a few more last minute lessons on what to expect.

“So long as their riders behave, yes,” R'fint replied. “That's not what worries me, H'koll.”

“You're worried about who'll be Weyrleader then?”

R'fint closed his eyes. “Earith tells me Ormaith is down at Fort Hold. That worries me. And I _know_ Maenida's not a well woman. Physically, she's as fit as she'll ever be, but _something_ 's not right between her and her queen. That worries me even more. The other queens....” He blew out his breath in frustration, and shook his head again. “I need someone back at the Weyr, keeping me informed. If something should happen....”

A chill ran down H'koll's spine. “You think she....” He trailed off, unwilling to voice the thought aloud: that Maenida might not be able to control Kiath's mating.

“As loud as she is, whatever happens, the weyrlings will hear it when it does. I need to know it's coming before they do, and I can't track the flight from here. Go, H'koll. Go now, and _keep me informed!_ ”

The urgency of R'fint's instructions had H'koll and Ruarnoth airborne again mere seconds later, and in the black of _between_ a wingbeat after that. They were setting yet more bad examples for the Weyrlings, flying with only half their usual straps and jumping _between_ so close to the ground, but H'koll didn't think they'd be high on the Weyrlingmaster's list of immediate concerns, not if R'fint was right about the likelihood of trouble back at the Weyr.

_What do you think, Ru? Can you sense how the flight is going?_

The green's mind stayed tight and small, very much focused on her destination. _I can't_ not _sense her._

She let through the merest trickle of what she was feeling from Kiath, and even within the senselessness of _between_ H'koll could tell he was responding to it.

 _How can she_ be _so loud?_ H'koll asked.

Daylight returned. With it came the Weyr, and the answer to H'koll's question. The Weyrbowl itself was empty, the feeding grounds littered with the broken bodies of herdbeasts and several wing-clipped wherries. But up on the rim and out on their ledges stood dragon after dragon, the Weyr's entire population bearing witness to their queen's flight. All heads were turned towards the southeast, silent and stiff, tracking Kiath as she flew into the cloud-shrouded dawn.

 _Kiath has made all of them listen to her,_ Ruarnoth explained. _All the dragons listen, and they help Kiath hear the Weyrwoman._

 _And we're hearing her through_ all _of them? Is that it?_

_Yes, that must be it!_

_Great._ A fine time to be heading for his weyr, alone. H'koll sighed, and directed Ruarnoth towards their ledge. _Tell Earith what we've learned, would you darling?_

The green banked and, as she did, a flicker of movement on a nearby ledge caught H'koll's eye. If it hadn't been for the unnatural stillness of the Weyr's dragons he'd never have noticed it at all, but today, it stood out like greenriders at a Gather. _Who's that on Porbath's ledge, Ru?_

_Who's Porbath? Which ledge?_

Porbath _had_ died long enough ago for Ruarnoth to have forgotten him, H'koll realised. _That one,_ he told her, visualising the ledge of the vacant weyr in question.

Ruarnoth obliged him by banking once again. _Oh!_ the dragon exclaimed. _Should she be here?_

H'koll squinted. Someone in a dress, most likely a woman, kneeling on the ground. Short dark hair, middling height, not so pale as most in the High Reaches. _Shells, it's weyrwoman Rahnis!_

_You want to speak to her, don't you?_

_Yes, I think we should land. R'fint thought something might be wrong. Where's her queen?_ Ruarnoth didn't answer right away, and H'koll had to prompt her again. _Where's Alaireth, Ru?_

 _Nowhere,_ the green answered as she backwinged into a light landing on the ledge.

By then, the absent queen was less of a concern; H'koll was close enough to see the state the weyrwoman was in. A line of drying blood ran down her face from her hairline, her throat was strangely marked, and her odd posture clearly wasn't one she'd chosen for herself. He'd thought the leather around her waist was a belt; now he could see better: it was a part of someone's flying straps, the rest of which held her arms tightly bound behind her, and it looked like there might be another loop restraining her legs. Her dress was filthy with dust and torn along one sleeve; beneath it, her arm was gashed and bleeding.

H'koll slid down from his green's neck and hurried over. “Rahnis! Who in Faranth's name did this to you?” He found one buckle and loosened the straps around her arms, then decided a knife would make quicker work of the rest of it. “And where's your queen?”

“Doesn't matter; she's safely away. Can't come back while this is going on.” She pulled her uninjured arm free first, then the other, more slowly. “Shells, that smarts! Thanks, H'koll.” She lifted a hand to her neck, and rubbed at it with a slight shudder. “M'arsen started it. Just enough to make me pass out, but he gave me a sharding good scare! The next thing I knew, I was trussed up like you found me, slung over Pellenth's neck. He waited for the flight to start, then he dumped me back there in the dark. I did the rest to myself. Fardling hard to move around like this. Had to roll most of the way from the inner weyr, and I didn't spot all the rough corners.”

“M'arsen? Why?”

“I tried to stop the flight before it started. He stopped me, instead. H'koll, I _need_ your help. I have to get into Maenida's weyr.”

He got the last of the straps untangled from the weyrwoman's legs, and helped her struggle to her feet. “R'fint said there was some kind of problem with Kiath. And that...” he gestured at the Weyr's dragons, “...that ain't right. What's happened?”

“Nothing yet, but neither of them will survive the flight!”

A dull sense of horror filled him at her words. “You're sure?”

“Yes! So's Sh'vek. That's why _he_ 's not here!” She took a stumbling step towards Ruarnoth, and he reached out to steady her. “Sand in my legs. Can't wait for it to pass; we don't have much time. They were barely managing when the flight started,” Rahnis explained, as he helped her up onto Ruarnoth's neck. “If the exertion alone doesn't do for Maenida, when Kiath gets caught...”

 _Tell Earith everything, Ru,_ H'koll thought as he swung himself up behind her, _and get us down fast_. “Hold tight, weyrwoman.” Ruarnoth leapt from the ledge, and opened her wings into a glide. “What then?” H'koll asked, shouting to be heard over the rushing air. Down in the bowl, he could see a man heading down the steps from Kiath's ledge: St'nebel, going by the shock of red hair. Several other men stood guard at the entrance to the weyr, and at the top of the steps.

“If she's still alive?” Rahnis called back. “There's no way Maenida will be able to control her, assuming she can stay in contact with Kiath at all. If she loses her, mid flight...”

That must have been what R'fint had feared. “And you think you can help save them? Why didn't M'arsen let you get on with it?”

Rahnis shook her head. “I _can't_ save Maenida and Kiath. No-one can. All I can do is stop the flight before they take someone else with them. F'ren's still in there, H'koll!”

Faranth! She couldn't _possibly_ mean.... H'koll silenced the thought swiftly. If she was right, it was the only option left.

 _I don't understand, H'koll,_ Ruarnoth said. _What can she do? Earith knows, but he won't tell me._

_What does he say?_

_He says his rider wants you to help her if you can._

_Then that's what we'll do._ “Take us down, Ru,” he said aloud, “and make it a sloppy landing.” _See if you can't scare those men off Kiath's ledge._

Ruarnoth did as she was bid, sending one man fleeing down the steps and leaving the other clinging to the far edge of the queen's ledge. H'koll jumped down ahead of Rahnis, just as a man appeared in the weyr's entrance. It was P'vash, blinking as he came out into the sunlight. The bronzerider walked right past him as H'koll hurried onward, half dazed, barely noticing him at all. A second figure appeared, following P'vash, but he stopped while he was still in the shadows of the weyr's entrance.

H'koll made to go around him – the entrances to the queens' weyrs were more than wide enough for a dozen men to walk abreast – but the man moved to block his path.

“Back off, greenrider,” M'arsen said. “Any interference now could be fatal.” Seeing Rahnis, he half-turned away from H'koll, a frown on his face. “Ah. Rahnis. Wasn't one warning enough for you?”

“Let me past, M'arsen,” Rahnis demanded.

“Did you know she tried to kill the Weyrwoman, greenrider?” M'arsen took a step towards her, a finger pointed accusingly at her chest. “Like Ankala of Igen all over again.”

H'koll had thought she might have done that. Once a dragon got it into her head to rise, you couldn't put her off it. If she was right, except for the fact that Maenida still lived and breathed, the Weyrwoman and her dragon were already lost. All that was left was to wait for the moment of their deaths, just like Alla and Favrurth. “Yeah, I suppose I did know. And I think she had good cause.” He exchanged a sympathetic look with Rahnis, and got himself back between her and the brownrider. “I'll keep him busy for you. Just do what you need to.”

“I will,” she said.

“That what you think?” M'arsen said, and laughed.

“And what are you going to do about it?” H'koll asked. “There's two of us, but only one of you. You might be able to keep weyrwoman Rahnis out, but you can't stop me as well.” He glanced at the door to the inner weyr, wishing and hoping that one of the bronzes might have just given up the pursuit, that someone would soon come stumbling out, giving him the distraction he so desperately needed.

The brownrider sneered. “You know you can't take me down, H'koll, and it won't take long to deal with _her._ ”

_H'koll?_

H'koll twitched as Ruarnoth bespoke him, but he knew he couldn't afford to take his eyes off M'arsen, who he knew from experience could lash out with barely any warning. _Kind of busy right now, Ru. M'arsen's going to be a problem._

 _Pellenth is here! He's making me move, and the men are coming up the stairs again. Earith says you must hurry, too, H'koll._ _I think he's right. Kiath is tiring, and Baxuth and Trath are closing fast._

 _Shard it!_ M'arsen had started sidling away from him again. H'koll took one last look at the door to Maenida's quarters, no more than two dragonlengths away, and launched himself at the other man with a snarl. In the edge of his vision, he saw Rahnis take her chance, and make a dash for the inner weyr. Torn between making a grab for her and dodging H'koll's rush, M'arsen hesitated; H'koll's tackle didn't hit him as square on as he'd hoped, but it was enough to take the man down.

Training with the weyrlings had made him a better fighter than he had been this time last turn. It hadn't been enough to beat Sh'vek's second at Turnover, and likely it still wouldn't be enough to beat him today... but he could at least give Rahnis time to act. They struck the ground together, M'arsen already twisting to find better leverage, writhing like a snake. Neither had an advantage on the other in terms of reach or height, and H'koll had never been able to decide whether his extra weight counted for or against him when it came to fighting M'arsen. The man could turn your own momentum against you before you knew it, and definitely wasn't lacking in stamina. H'koll knew his only chance was to hit first, hit fast and, above all, hit _hard._ He managed to landed one punch on M'arsen's cheekbone before the brownrider wriggled free, then M'arsen got his own back, somehow hooking a leg around one of H'koll's own. While H'koll was off-balance, both men still linked at the legs, M'arsen toppled them sideways and slammed H'koll's head back towards the floor. The impact was softened only by H'koll's desperate onwards roll. His ears were ringing and his vision went briefly dark, but somehow he got free of M'arsen's grip. H'koll pulled himself away, wondering why his ears were ringing so strangely, why Ruarnoth's mind had suddenly tightened in anguished pain.

And then he knew.

Swearing loudly, M'arsen bore down on him again, but H'koll had lost all heart for the fight.

The dragons were keening.

And Kiath was gone.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next update on Friday.


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The tags are there for a reason. Consider yourselves reminded.

_They say that the Weyrfolk know little of love;_   
_their children are fostered, and rarely they wed._   
_But what human heart could ever compete_   
_with the dragons for whom they are bred?_

_A woman would die for her children._   
_A man do the same for his wife._   
_But none know the truth of a dragonman's world:_   
_The dragonless don't cling to life._

**  
Morning, 13.3.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

  
Between one step and the next, Rahnis' worst fears came to pass.

Utterly grief-stricken, each and every one of the Weyr's dragons keened for their lost queen with all their might. Inside Kiath's weyr, the sound must surely have been muted by metres of solid rock, but even so it struck Rahnis to her core, an almost physical blow that sent her reeling against the wall in shock. Alaireth wasn't there to share the dragons' emotions with her, but there was no mistaking the depth of their grief. The keening reverberated around the Weyr, a dissonant, high-pitched groan that set her earbones aching. This, _this_ , was how a Weyr mourned its queens. Ahead of her, the door to Maenida's quarters swung open. G'dil and T'frick staggered through it, clinging to each other for support. Behind her, H'koll and M'arsen were locked in futile combat.

Rahnis hurried onwards, desperate to know the truth of what had occurred, both inside the weyr, and in the skies above them all. She could hear shouts and screams mixed with the full-throated keening of the dragons. She entered the inner rooms at a run, and stumbled to a stop as she saw them. There was S'kloss, closest to her, shaking his head in violent twitches, looking as if he was trying to dislodge water from his ears. He was half dressed and had the rest of his clothes clutched to his chest in a bundle, and he was swaying on the spot. Beyond him, C'nir grimaced silently, his arms wrapped around the shoulders of another man: M'gan, struggling fiercely and swearing at the top of his lungs as C'nir tried to pull him away. M'gan's face was wet with a spray of blood; his hands were grasping claws, mere inches from reaching the last bronzerider in the room: the man who'd killed Maenida.

F'ren.

And he was the one who was screaming.

He stared blankly across the room, mouth wide, not seeing her at all, nor Maenida's corpse crumpled on the floor beside him. He still held the knife he'd used to cut her throat. Blood dripped from it still, and from him. He was coated with it.

His screams were wordless: pain given voice. The sound was almost worse than the noise the dragons were still making. Rahnis wanted nothing more than to press her fists to her ears and run far, far away from it. She didn't want to think about what that terrible sound meant...but there was simply no escaping it. F'ren had killed Maenida, no question of it...but had he done so before or _after_ Kiath's death? Had Trath caught her already, or not? As terrified as she was of finding out, she couldn't leave anyone to suffer like that.

The dragons' keening slowly began to fade, and she quietly and cautiously moved closer. C'nir pulled M'gan another step further back; the fight was going out of M'gan now, but she was glad not to be too close. C'nir shook his head and hissed at her to keep back as she passed; he was warning her about F'ren, not M'gan, she realised. Approaching an armed, insane, potentially dragonless man _was_ a particularly foolhardy thing to do...but she'd seen herself, safe, being reunited with Alaireth again. As scared as she was, she knew he wouldn't hurt her.

“F'ren?”

He didn't respond, so she tried again. “F'ren!”

This time, he _did_ stop screaming. The silence that replaced it was almost as horrifying as the noise had been. His chest was heaving rapidly, and she didn't know if he'd heard her, or had just run out of breath. Rahnis tentatively placed one hand on his knife-arm and the other on the hand that was holding the blade, not to try to make him let it go, just to stop him trying to use it on anyone else...or on himself. “F'ren, it's Rahnis. F'r-”

She broke off as he dropped the knife and whirled towards her, rigidity giving way to action faster than she'd have thought humanly possible. Before she could back away, he grabbed for her, eyes terrifyingly wild with dragonlust and madness. She cried out as his fingers tightened painfully on her injured arm; once again, he either didn't hear or didn't care. He pulled her closer, pressing himself against her, his maimed hand taking a twisting hold on the hair at the back of her head. It was almost a relief when he pressed his lips against hers, because that meant she was too close to see the anguished look in his eyes any more. She closed her eyes, fixing her mind on the promise of seeing Alaireth again, found the knife with her left foot, and kicked it in what she thought was C'nir's direction. It skittered across the floor. A heartbeat later, F'ren collapsed to his knees. He pulled her down with him and slumped against her, sobbing, at her breast.

Without thinking, she reached up and stroked his damp hair. Maenida lay no more than an arm's length away from them. The floor around Maenida's body was dark and drenched, but the flow of blood from the gaping wound at the Weyrwoman's neck had ebbed away to almost nothing now. Her face was pale and her eyes were growing glassy, like those of a dead beast. The man Rahnis was holding – the man she'd been growing to love – had done that to her. He'd mercilessly ended two lives...and, oh Faranth, how much else had he lost alongside them?

She'd had a chance to stop all of this from happening. He'd only done what he'd done because _she'd_ failed.

"F'ren?” she said softly. “Faranth, F'ren! Talk to me, _please!_ "

Slowly, the bronzerider lifted his head. The look on his face reminded her of a shocked weyrling she'd once seen, mortally wounded in his first Threadfall. There was nothing but horror and despair in his eyes, even now.

"I killed them," he whispered.

"I know." She cupped his face with her hands; they were just as bloody as his were, now. Swallowing back a mouthful of bile, she forced herself to ask the only question that mattered. “F'ren, what of Trath?”

He shuddered, but although he met her gaze, she could have sworn that he didn't recognise her at all.

“I don't know where he is.” F'ren's face twisted, broken, as he spoke. "I killed them,” he said again, and then once more. Over and over again he repeated the words, louder each time. Then, something snapped inside of him. He blinked, and she saw that he recognised her at last.

“Rahnis,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “Where are they? Where? You have to tell me, _please_!” His voice cracked and his eyes grew vague and distant again, just as if he was talking to his dragon. “Where are you, Trath?” he asked, and the sheer desperation and pain in the question was pitiful to behold. His head drooped, and he started to weep.

Tears filled her own eyes; she didn't even try to hold them back. Was it the stress and shock of Kiath's death, coupled with his own actions, that had done this to him? Having been deep in rapport with Trath, might he just be feeling a dragon's weight of grief at the queen's death? M'gan was in almost as bad a state... but, then again, M'gan wasn't continually questioning his dragon's whereabouts. Heart aching, Rahnis looked back over her shoulder and found C'nir and S'kloss watching her. M'gan sat slumped in a chair, sobbing his heart out even louder than F'ren, but with dragonriders that could mean anything or nothing. S'kloss had picked up the knife, a clear look of distaste on his face, but didn't seem to know what to do with it next. She wondered if it might have been his, and how much he and the others had known about the Weyrwoman's condition. “Maenida would never have brought Kiath back to the Weyr," she told them quietly.

S'kloss nodded right away, and sheathed his knife. C'nir's eyes merely narrowed, but she was fairly sure he'd understood, too. M'gan might as well not have even been in the room. She was on the verge of saying more, of telling them how she'd earlier tried to stop the flight herself, when she heard voices and footsteps in the outer weyr.

The door swung open, and Sh'vek stormed in. “What happened?” he demanded. Then, just as Rahnis herself had done, he stopped in his tracks as he took in the scene, mouthing Maenida's name silently.

Rahnis watched him as his eyes tracked over Maenida, the men, herself. Emotions coursed across his features, too fast for her to read.

“Faranth,” he muttered. “ _Faranth!”_

An unfamiliar man wearing the knots of the Healer Hall made to follow him in, but Sh'vek stopped him with an out-flung arm.

“I might be able to...” the healer started.

“Her dragon's gone,” Sh'vek said softly. “There's nothing that you or I or anyone else can do for her now, Healer Renso. See to the living. You can start with my Wingsecond. This is Weyr business now.”

He ushered the healer back out of the room and closed the door firmly behind him, then walked slowly across the room and knelt down beside the Weyrwoman's body. Rahnis tightened her grip on F'ren; Faranth only knew what he might do in his state if he should notice Sh'vek was there. Tenderly, Sh'vek closed Maenida's unseeing eyes and folded her arms across her breast, but it did little to lessen the appalling sight of her. Rahnis could see pain and grief on his face clearly now, and perhaps a little guilt. The sight of it bewildered her; she couldn't reconcile it with what he'd done, with everything he _hadn't_ done. Maenida might not have been the woman she once was, the woman he'd cared for, but she hadn't yet been lost completely. Did he regret her death, or simply the manner of it? If he'd truly felt that much for Maenida, how could he ever have let this happen? He could and should have done more to stop Kiath rising. Could have acted earlier. Could have acted as late as yesterday, even. Hadn't.

Sh'vek looked across at her and Fren, and his pained expression briefly changed into something that looked horribly like triumph. A moment later his face hardened and all sign of it was gone. Whatever he was truly feeling, Rahnis already knew that he'd intended to use the Weyrwoman's death to his own advantage, and she was determined not to let him get away with it if she could. Dear Faranth, whatever genuine grief he'd felt over his weyrmate's death, the slight trace of humanity it had given him was a small thing against the appalling way he'd used Maenida! With Maenida dead, he might think he could cow Delene into keeping him as Weyrleader...but it wouldn't be Delene's choice to make. Sh'vek didn't know it yet, but his days as Weyrleader were numbered. That single thought was enough to keep her going. For doing this to Kiath, to F'ren, to the entire Weyr, she promised herself then and there that she'd make him pay.

Slowly, Sh'vek rocked back onto his heels and pushed himself upright. He wiped his hands dry on his trousers, now gorily stained at the knees, then turned to address the other bronzeriders. “S'kloss, get M'gan out of here. Take him to Tarkan, but don't let them just clean him up and let him off. Someone needs to keep an eye on him. He's not in his right mind yet, probably won't be until Baxuth gets back, and I don't want him spreading wild rumours in the meanwhile. While you're there, tell Tarkan what's happened here, and ask him to see to the usual arrangements. When you've done that, find G'dil. If you think he's up to it, have him call back Delene, and make sure he knows he's to stay with her. If not, the job's yours _._ The Weyr needs her now. Got all that? _”_

“Yes, Weyrleader,” S'kloss said. He gave Sh'vek a tidily precise salute, incongruous as it was coming from a man wearing nothing but socks and a shirt, then resumed his search for the rest of his and M'gan's clothes amongst the bloodied mess at the foot of Maenida's bed.

“Delene's in Nerat,” C'nir said. “I know where to find her.”

Sh'vek gave him a level look. “I'm sure you do.”

C'nir stared back at him for a while, then gave up and turned away. “C'mon, M'gan. Let's get you out of here.” He helped the other bronzerider up and tried to encourage him to get himself dressed in the clothes S'kloss threw their way, but M'gan shook off the assistance and, ignoring his clothes, made for the door.

“S'kloss...” Sh'vek warned.

S'kloss gave up on his search for his second boot and followed hastily after M'gan. C'nir made to follow, but stopped at a signal from Sh'vek. As the other men left, M'arsen came back in, scowling; one of his arms hung limply in a makeshift sling and he was sporting a lacerated lip and cheek that was swelling rapidly up towards his right eye. H'koll must have broken his arm, Rahnis realised, and maybe his cheekbone too. She wondered, feeling slightly sickened, what the brownrider had done to him in return.

“Thir,” M'arsen lisped.

Sh'vek acknowledged his second's arrival, then gestured to C'nir. “Report, Wingleader. What occurred?”

C'nir stiffened. “What occurred? _Kiath_ , did, that's what. I've never known a flight like it. Nothing even comes close. It wasn't so bad to start with – Telemath and I, it was like we were just deeper into the chase than usual – but the further we got from the Weyr, every time another one of us dropped back....” He trailed off, and shuddered. “Faranth, it was like that threadfall when this whole mess began, only ten times _worse._ Kiath, she...where _were_ you, Sh'vek? I didn't see any sign of Ormaith, not once!”

“I went to fetch a healer for Maenida. I thought there might be something they could give her to help her through it. Sadly, I was delayed, and we got back too late to be of any use.”

“Oh.” C'nir's brow furrowed, but he clearly knew better than to question Sh'vek's story then and there.

“Continue, C'nir,” Sh'vek prompted.

“Kiath _pulled_ at us. Every time a bronze dropped back, the rest of us just flew faster and harder. We didn't have a choice. Telemath almost had her, once, then that fardling wherry Baxuth got in our way, and Trath overtook us both. I didn't see much after that. We were in and out of the cloud tops, trying to get past Baxuth again, and then Kiath dived. We all followed, and then...then Tel and I felt something from Kiath. We thought she'd been caught, but it was all wrong, and we could tell she couldn't feel Maenida any more. She screamed, somewhere below us, and that's when I saw what F'ren was doing. When Kiath went _between._ She'd lost Maenida, and she just... she just went _between_. We felt her die. We felt them _both_ die.”

“What about Trath?” Rahnis asked.

Sh'vek shot her a furious look, but with a quick flick of his fingers he motioned for C'nir to answer the question all the same. “I'd like to know that, too.”

C'nir's eyes slid speculatively across to F'ren. “Like I said, we didn't see it, but Telemath says... Telemath says he can't hear anything from Trath. He says he went _between,_ too.”

The words seared into Rahnis like live threads. Trath had gone _between?_ She pressed a hand to her mouth in horror, tasting Maenida's blood on her lips, wishing she could turn time back on itself and un-hear what C'nir had said. It couldn't be true. She wouldn't _let_ it be true. And she knew, deep in her heart, that she'd been waiting for someone to say those very words; there was no surprise in hearing them, none whatsoever. Trath had gone _between._ Even so, she couldn't abandon her last, slim hopes. “He might have come back out!”

C'nir shook his head. “We didn't hear him, and I'm not going to press Telemath to reach for any dragon who's more likely to be dead than not, not now, not so soon after losing Kiath like that. If he's alive, we'll soon know about it. But I don't think we'll see him again, not after this.”

“Ormaith concurs,” Sh'vek said. “He can't hear Trath either.”

She looked down at F'ren, desperate to see some sign, any sign at all, that Trath hadn't been lost, that F'ren wasn't now dragonless. But the small glimpse of sanity she'd seen in him earlier was nowhere now, and the only words she could make out among his muffled moans were appeals for his dragon's forgiveness. If Alaireth was back with her, she'd know for sure. If she got Alaireth back fast enough, might there even be a chance that the queen could act? The slimmest of hopes...but the queen would need to reach into the very core of Kiath's flight, an almost unbearable proposition so close to her own rising. Even if the queen could do it, if success was guaranteed, Rahnis knew it would be utterly wrong for her to insist that Alaireth make the attempt.

“So,” Sh'vek continued, “F'ren is once again Firrenor, it seems. That simplifies matters. This, though. _This._ ” He pointed back behind him at Maenida, without looking around. _“_ Did it happen before or after Kiath died? Did _he_ cause it?”

C'nir shook his head. “It all happened at once. I don't know! Before, I think. He said he killed them, and Kiath definitely lost touch with Maenida before she went _between_.” He frowned, and closed his eyes. “I need to remember, Tel. Don't stop me looking.”

There was a pause before the bronzerider spoke again, his eyes still tightly shut. “I didn't know he had a knife. The part of me that wasn't with Tel...I saw him. Kiath was pulling us, and he was first to reach her. Then he just....” Slowly, he opened his eyes again, and nodded. “That's when he did it, right then, the moment he reached her. There was nothing any of the rest of us could do.”

“So he murdered Kiath as well as Maenida.” Sh'vek paced away across the room, and folded his hands behind his back. “You'd swear to that, would you, C'nir?”

Rahnis couldn't see Sh'vek's face, but she could tell that he wasn't displeased by what he'd just said. There was no crime worse than causing the death of a dragon, and, without another dragon's life in the balance, nothing to hold Sh'vek back from demanding that the ultimate sanctions be applied. In an Interval, that supposedly meant permanent exile...although the records were clear that on the few occasions when such things had happened before, unfortunate 'accidents' had befallen the perpetrator more often than not. In a Pass.... Rahnis looked up at C'nir, silently pleading for him to raise the extenuating circumstances they were all aware of: that F'ren had acted in the defence of his own dragon's life.

The bronzerider refused to meet her eyes. “Everything I've said is the truth,” he said. “I'll swear to that.”

“That will suffice,” Sh'vek said. “I'll prepare a document for your sig-” He stopped, interrupted by a knock at the door, and went to see who was there.

“How could you, C'nir?” Rahnis hissed as Sh'vek left the room, furious that he was giving up on another dragonrider so easily.

“I don't owe him anything!”

Now _that_ was a lie! “You think Sh'vek cared which of your bronzes died with Kiath?”

C'nir swallowed back whatever his retort might have been as Sh'vek returned, trailed by Healer Tilga and a pair of stretcher bearers. Did C'nir believe her? Rahnis wasn't sure, but he didn't look comfortable with the idea, even as he busied himself with his bootlaces, making no move to draw Sh'vek's attention, which was back with Maenida again. The room was silent while Tilga made a brief examination of the Weyrwoman's body. She spoke a few instructions to the men who'd accompanied her, who then eased Maenida's body gently onto the stretcher and bore her away. Sh'vek lingered in the doorway and watched them depart, while Tilga turned her attention to F'ren.

“Ah,” she said, and tutted her lips. The Healer's face was bleakly resigned with what she was seeing. “Would you move so I can see him better, Rahnis?”

Choking back a sob of her own, Rahnis nodded and shuffled sideways, until F'ren was slumped almost face-up in her lap. He'd started shaking some time ago, and the change in position only worsened it.

Tilga winced, and stretched out a hand to take a measure of F'ren's movements. “Shock's normal in these circumstances. Best we can do now is see that he rests. Hold his head for me, weyrwoman.”

She did as instructed while Tilga fished out a bottle and a set of measuring spoons from her apron. The healer selected the second smallest and filled it to brimming, then slipped it with practised ease into F'ren's mouth. His face twisted in distaste at the bitter liquid, but he swallowed it down regardless.

“He'll sleep a few hours, that's all,” Tilga said softly. “Some aren't affected as badly as others, but we won't know for cer-”

“You might not, but the rest of us do,” C'nir said. “He won't want to wake. Kinder to end it now.”

“Shut up, C'nir!” Rahnis hissed, wishing with all her heart that she could disagree with the man. If Trath was gone.... She'd thought she'd hated the Weyrleader before, for his part in the destruction of her past, and the child that might have been her future, but for doing _this_ to Kiath and Maenida and F'ren and the whole fardling Weyr there could never be any possibility of forgiveness. She held F'ren close while his shaking eased, watched his eyelids slowly droop closed and an inane smile grow on his face. Maybe C'nir was right, maybe it would be for the best if he simply slipped into death from his sleep. _Alaireth will know,_ she decided. If Trath was gone, and nothing could be done to bring him back, she wouldn't try to deny F'ren that option the next time he woke. Not if he was sane enough to ask for it.

F'ren drifted deeper into sleep and, as his breathing steadied and slowed and the immediacy of each moment faded, Rahnis abruptly remembered that there was a world and people beyond the walls of Maenida's weyr. “Was H'koll hurt, too?” she asked Tilga, hoping that the woman might know what had happened to him. With luck, she could claim responsibility for his actions and prevent him from being punished for helping her...but she didn't know how she'd ever make it up to him or his dragon if the greenrider had been badly injured on her account.

“Four broken ribs and two fingers,” Tilga said. “He's lucky not to have a punctured lung, but we still have to wait and see for his kidney. Tarkan's treating him now.”

That news could have been worse. “Please pass on my hopes for his recovery when you see him.”

“I shall. There, that's better.” Tilga lifted her hand from the pulse point at F'ren's wrist, and looked over at Sh'vek, still stood by the door. “He should really be moved to the infirmary. Can I send for some more bearers, Weyrleader?”

Sh'vek crossed his arms and shook his head. “He's too dangerous. I want him detained.”

“Dangerous? He's unconscious!”

“Well then, he'll be easier to manage. You can go back to your usual duties now, Healer Tilga. C'nir? See to it. And make sure he _stays_ detained.”

“Yes, Weyrleader.”

With Tilga's assistance, C'nir wrestled F'ren up and onto his shoulder. Rahnis followed them to the door, reluctant to let F'ren out of her sight, but equally keen to get him safely away from Sh'vek. With Alaireth still _between_ times, she felt horribly alone and adrift; she _needed_ to get out to the bowl, needed to be where Alaireth had shown her so she could call the queen back to the Weyr again. Finding out Trath's fate for certain was only a part of it. The Weyr would need both Linnebith and Alaireth right now, to soothe the dragons' grief. _You need me_ , Alaireth had told her, and, _They'll need me too._ Rahnis hadn't understood her dragon's urgency earlier, but now it all made sense. The Weyr also needed to know the truth of the circumstances surrounding Maenida's death. With Alaireth's help, she'd see to it that every last dragon on Pern knew what had happened here today, and there wasn't a fardling thing Sh'vek could do to stop her!

Or was there? Sh'vek might think there was, she realised, meeting the Weyrleader's gaze as he stepped squarely into her path. Rahnis felt suddenly afraid, and less certain than ever that her position as a queenrider afforded her any protection at all. But Alaireth _had_ seen her future self alive and well in the bowl; surely that had to be enough. “If you'll excuse me, Weyrleader?” she tried.

“Where do you think you're going?”

Anywhere would suit her fine, but she settled for the simplest, honest answer. “My weyr. I need to call Alaireth back.”

“No, you don't,” Sh'vek said firmly. “I'm not done with you yet. Get back over there, and sit down.”

She heard a scraping sound, and turned to see M'arsen pulling one of the chairs away from the table with his good arm. “You heard the Weyrleader, Rahnith.”

“No.” She glared back and forth between both men. “I am hurt, I am filthy, but most of all right now, _you are keeping me from my dragon_. Alaireth will be back soon, and she won't be happy about any of this. If you have anything more to say to me, it can wait until later, assuming Alaireth will permit either one of you onto her ledge. I rather doubt that she will.”

Sh'vek raised an eyebrow. “What will it take to teach you to follow orders, I wonder? I won't put up with any more of your interference in the running of my Weyr, Rahnis.”

“Fine!” she snapped. “I'll make sure you don't have to.”

“Oh, _very_ good, Weyrwoman Rahnis! That almost sounds like a threat.”

“Are you going to let me leave, or not?”

He smiled coldly down at her. “If you leave, you won't have any say in Firrenor's fate.”

Firrenor's fate? A shiver ran down her spine. Was Sh'vek so certain that Trath was lost for good? How quickly did he mean to act?

“Yes. I rather thought that might get your attention. He _was_ your lover, wasn't he?”

She didn't dignify the question with an answer, nor waste time wondering how he'd guessed. She didn't think he had any intention of listening to her opinions in any case, but whatever chance there was that Trath might return from _between_ , it wouldn't matter one bit if Sh'vek meant to see that he didn't have a rider to come back to. “Alaireth-”

“Alaireth can wait. She's not going anywhere. Neither are you, are you?”

Reluctantly, she shook her head. “What will happen to F'ren?”

“Firrenor,” he corrected. “Exile, if he's lucky. Threadfall, if not. Or perhaps I'll let him choose for himself?”

There was a cruel gleam in Sh'vek's eyes; Rahnis could guess all too easily which option he favoured. “You can't do that!”

“We'll see. It all rather depends on...well, we'll get to that.” He turned away from her and pushed the door closed. “But you're right,” he went on, “you could do with getting yourself cleaned up. Use the pool. You can borrow something clean of Maenida's for now.”

M'arsen opened the dresser one-handed and rifled through it, pulling out a shirt and a long skirt. There weren't many less appealing notions than dressing in a dead woman's clothes...although, having M'arsen sent in after her to force her into them was probably one of them. Better perhaps to go along with Sh'vek for now; he couldn't keep her in here for ever. She snatched the clothes from M'arsen's outstretched hand, hoping that they'd actually fit, and carried on into the back room. Once inside, she stripped off her own soiled clothes and washed as quickly as she could manage. Over the noise of the flowing water she could just about hear Sh'vek and M'arsen engaged in a low conversation, but nothing of what was said beyond the odd word here and there. M'arsen mentioned a map at one point. Shard it, she hoped they were only discussing possible islands!

The water seemed to take forever to run clear but eventually she was clean enough to dress herself again without ruining another set of clothes. The fit of the shirt and skirt was near enough, but it felt wrong, quite wrong, wearing Maenida's clothes. When she came out again, M'arsen was gone, and Sh'vek was standing beside the table, busily examining a map and making notes on a nearby slate. As she watched, he carefully re-positioned a set of engraved metal spacers used to measure out threadfall patterns. Faranth, he hadn't been bluffing about Threadfall! Rahnis thought ahead to the rest of the month's falls: she'd been told that the spring cycle in the two months following the Crom nor-easter was a well-established and familiar pattern for the Weyr, with the threads of every second and third fall striking well within Hold boundaries, where not one could be permitted a chance to burrow. Sh'vek had to be considering one of the one-in-three falls that fell off-pattern...or perhaps even outside High Reaches territory. Curious and afraid, she went to see for herself.

The map was an old one, covering the southernmost regions of uninhabited tundra extending down from the North Ranges all the way to Ogren Hold. Sh'vek jotted down another set of coordinates and dates as she reached the table: the tail end of an off-pattern threadfall five days from now that would trace the barren hills and mountains of the Ranges before petering out above the higher-altitude glacier lying east of Ogren. As there was little for the threads to feed on up there it wasn't a fall the Weyr would waste resources fighting: the lower-lying valleys were flamed clear of greenery several times a turn, and the nearest crop fields were an hour's flight away, well out of range of even the hardiest burrows. Rahnis reached out and placed her fingers on the map, touching the area in question. “You mean...” she began, but her mouth was almost too dry to speak. She swallowed, moistened her lips, and tried again. “You mean to abandon him there, don't you?”

“A well-defended crop field would hardly suit,” Sh'vek said. “But no. I doubt there'll be anything falling there but crackdust for a good month or more.” He sighed loudly. “Never thought I'd see the day when I actually _wanted_ a nice spell of warm weather in the north. I may have to time it after all.”

Rahnis looked round at Sh'vek; the fardling man was _smiling_ to himself! “And you _dare_ to call F'ren a murderer? All he did was try to save his own dragon's life; no rider can be condemned for that!”

“No?” He straightened up, and crossed his arms. “Remind me, Rahnis, of the crimes a man can be exiled for.”

On that score the Charter was very clear. Rahnis turned around and paraphrased the relevant passage from memory, voice dripping with scorn. “Depending on the severity of the offence _and_ upon any _mitigating circumstances_ , a man may be exiled for murder, aggravated rape and other grievous acts of violence, deliberate contagion or breach of quarantine leading to an outbreak of pestilence, and acts of gross negligence resulting in the loss of life or, during a Pass, foodstuffs equivalent to a half-turn's tithe. And, any act, intentional or otherwise, which results in the death of a dragon. Not that _any_ of that applies to dragonriders, else every single Weyrlingmaster, Wingleader and Weyrleader would be guilty multiple times over.”

“Irrelevant, in his case.”

“So _you_ say.”

Sh'vek barked a laugh. “Shells, woman, you _are_ desperate! But I suppose I could humour you for a while. You want to treat Firrenor as a dragonrider, still? Then tell me what the penalty is when one dragonrider kills another!”

It rarely happened. When it did, the culprit's fate was to be transferred to another Weyr, grounded and in disgrace, where the dragon would be inhibited by the Weyr's queens and the rider would be shunned and forced to survive on subsistence rations. If that proved inadequate, the dragon and rider would be forcibly separated from each other's company. “It's certainly not being left out for Thread!” Rahnis snapped.

“More's the pity! You've read of Ankala, I assume?”

Who hadn't? She might have lived and died well over a century into the previous interval, but Igen Weyr had never recovered from the consequences of their most infamous Weyrwoman's actions. “Ankala was a sick, jealous fool.”

“Mmm.” Sh'vek took a step towards her and leaned in close to speak softly into her ear. “M'arsen told me what you attempted to do, earlier. A good thing you failed, Otherwise, I think you'd find yourself envying Ankala's fate.”

“What?” Was he seriously suggesting that he'd have held _her_ accountable for Kiath's death, if she'd succeeded? That what she'd attempted, out of sheer, hideous necessity, was in any way comparable to an unhinged woman who'd murdered a rival? “Kiath was doomed from the outset. Are two deaths worse than three, or more? Is a heart-broken Weyr _better_ off for having experienced her last flight? I tried to spare the Weyr as much pain as I could,” she cried, jabbing her own chest for emphasis and then levelling a finger accusingly at his, “but _you're_ the one who brought it down on us.”

Sh'vek brushed her hand aside. “Then you stand by your actions?”

“I do. H'koll's too,” she added hastily. “He acted on my behalf.”

“Heard, and witnessed, Weyrwoman.” Sh'vek bent back over the table, and moved the weights off the corners of the uppermost map, allowing it to spring back into a loose roll.

“What about F'ren?” Rahnis demanded. Sh'vek could make as many empty threats as he wanted, but she wasn't going to leave until she had a better idea of what he intended.

Ignoring her, Sh'vek picked up the map and began to wind it tighter between his palms. As he did so, the formality of his earlier words suddenly struck her. He'd asked her if she stood by her actions. She did, of course, but not necessarily as _M'arsen_ had described them to the Weyrleader. And for Sh'vek to _hear and witness_ her answer said much. She hadn't had any intention of lying about what had occurred in Maenida's weyr today, so what purpose could a witnessed confession on her part, accurate or not, possibly serve? Surely M'arsen's version of events couldn't differ too far from her own? On the other hand, M'arsen hadn't been there to hear what Sh'vek had told her before he'd left. What part of the truth could he or Sh'vek have twisted to the Weyrleader's own ends? Having asked herself that question, she could see only the one answer. She shivered, not liking the way this was going.

“You're going to tell them that Maenida might have survived Kiath's flight, aren't you?” she murmured.

Sh'vek looped a twist of leather around the rolled-up hide, and acknowledged her words with a slight nod. “I received confirmation from the Healer Hall, oh, three days ago. Master Rynder found no cause to believe that the normal physical activity of a woman in her position was beyond her.”

“But that hasn't been an issue for months!” Rahnis blurted out at once, surprised that the man's ploy was so weak. “Her connection with Kiath was the problem, has _always_ been the problem! Faranth, Sh'vek, how many hours – days! – months! – have Ormaith and Linnebith and Alaireth spent holding them together, through force of will alone at times? She might have got better physically over the last couple of months, but mentally she barely improved at all!”

“And you think _you_ can convince the Weyr of that, do you? Even when I tell them otherwise?”

Could she? It might be the absolute truth, she might have Alaireth's own experiences with Kiath to back it up, but dragons often misunderstood some of the smaller details of their rider's lives, and other humans even more frequently. Her queen could tell the other dragons that her rider was being truthful, but everyone knew that a canny rider could slip a well-crafted lie past her dragon's attention. If Sh'vek were to take an opposing stance, with Delene to back him up and M'arsen to portray the Weyrleader's absence from the flight as a doomed attempt to avert disaster – and there was no doubt in her mind that he'd manage that detail easily enough – who would the Weyr believe?

Furious with herself almost as much as she was with Sh'vek, Rahnis looked away, swearing under her breath. There was nothing she could do or say here that would do any good at all, not with Sh'vek so determined to see F'ren pay the price for the Weyrleader's own crimes. And, if she was reading the situation correctly, he intended to tar her with the same brush, to ruin her credibility before she could act against him. How had she got herself into this mess? What kind of weyrwoman was she, to be so useless without Alaireth beside her? Was she truly so powerless on her own, without a queen's authority to lend weight to her words?

Without a queen's authority.

That was it. That was all she needed. Leaving Sh'vek's question unanswered – it didn't matter any more – Rahnis made for the door. Opening it, she was confronted by an expanse of Ormaith's flank. “Tell your dragon to move, Sh'vek,” she said, wondering how else the Weyrleader planned to stymie her. The dragon would have to move eventually, but sooner would be better than later.

Ormaith didn't budge an inch, but Rahnis' patience was already short. She glared back at Sh'vek. “Well?”

Sh'vek pulled opened a drawer and took out a pot of ink and a stylus, which he set down on the table beside a stack of document hides. “I'm not finished with you yet, Rahnis.”

Oh, wasn't he? “No?”

“No.”

Rahnis couldn't hold her fury in check any longer. He had no right to keep her here, no right at all! “Well _I'm_ finished with _you_. You became nothing more than an interim Weyrleader from the moment you announced Maenida's retirement, but by right of her age Linnebith is senior in truth now. _Your_ authority died with Kiath, and until the next queen rises, _Delene's_ the one who makes the final decisions around here, not you. I don't think she'll be at all pleased by what you did today. I know for a fact that C'nir isn't, and right now? Right now, he has a better right by far to wear those knots than you do. Now get your ugly bronze to move his lazy backside out of my way _right now_ , before I get _really_ angry!”

Chukling to himself, Sh'vek sauntered towards her, evidently not the least bit perturbed by her outburst. “Rahnis, Rahnis! C'nir has almost as little chance of becoming Weyrleader here as Delene does of becoming Weyrwoman.”

She hadn't expected him to back down in the face of what she'd said, not right away, but she _had_ thought she might provoke him at least enough to gain some leverage. Rather than being angry with her, the man seemed amused! As things stood, it was true that Delene probably wasn't capable of recognising how the balance of power in the Weyr had shifted in her favour, as temporary as it would be, but even she would figure it out fast enough if Sh'vek tried to remove her.

“Kiath's _gone,_ Sh'vek,” she said, growing ever more exasperated. “Don't tell me that fact has escaped your attention! If you ever had any genuine intention of transferring Linnebith, it's too late for that now. The best thing you can do for yourself is to let me leave.” She looked him in the eyes, and made her offer. “Give me good enough reason to be circumspect, and I'll hold my silence. Let me leave, put F'ren's fate in my hands, and I'll give you my word that I'll never speak out against my Weyrleader.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “Good enough reason, eh? Strangely enough, I already had something along those lines in mind. The details differ, and _my_ version doesn't have loopholes big enough to fly a dragon through...but I think we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. You see, Rahnis...I know exactly what you got up to this winter.”

He paused, giving his words a chance to sink in. Dread grew inside Rahnis like burrowing thread, growing unstoppably and consuming everything in its path.

“I know _all of it,_ ” he continued. “Where you were, and _when_ you went.”

“I'm not sure I unders-”

“Oh, but you do!”

“No!” Rahnis shook her head in sheer denial. This couldn't be happening, not like this, not now!

He tilted his head to one side, seemingly bemused by her surprise. “Faranth, girl, do you think I can't recognise when a rider's been timing it? Did you think I hadn't read my _own_ records?”

She struggled to find something more to say, some way of denying the truth. But, _Sh'vek knows more than you'd think_ , he'd told her, no more than a sevenday ago. More than she'd thought he might at the time; more, even, than he'd later admitted to. And if he was telling the truth about having known that she'd timed it, having known _when_ she'd timed it...then it probably wasn't a recent discovery. He took her by the arm and drew her away from the door; she was too stunned by his revelation to protest. “How long?” she whispered, more to herself than to Sh'vek. Her limbs felt like useless, heavy weights, but the despair that grew in her heart as she raced through the implications was even worse. Everything she and F'ren had done, for all those months, and Sh'vek hadn't been deceived at all.

“When did I find out you were timing?” Sh'vek stopped, and turned her to face him. “I guessed what was happening the morning after that bluerider drank himself to death. It took a _little_ longer before I was certain, but that was still well before you figured it out for yourself. Once I knew what you were up to, well, the reasons for it were obvious. I assumed I'd have to lead you through the whole process at first – your Istan really did you no favours with his _stupid_ demise – but even when everything went wrong after Turnover and you decided to figure it all out for yourself, I couldn't be completely displeased. The fact that you were timing was all that mattered. The timing was everything.”

Rahnis started; he'd said those very same words the night he'd come to her in her weyr, the night she and F'ren had gone _between_ times with their dragons. He _had_ known, even then!

“Fortunately,” Sh'vek continued, “the end result was exactly the same regardless of whether I went with you or not. You and Alaireth lived your double life long enough to ensure that she'd rise before Linnebith, you spared me all the risk...and the only people who know what you've done are you, me and Firrenor. I should compliment you on how well you've concealed your queen's condition, by the way. Keep that up, and with the rest of the Weyr so focused on Linnebith I doubt anyone, man or dragon, will be any the wiser until the very hour she rises.”

“But...but you, you and Delene!” He'd _slept_ with the other weyrwoman, had coddled and cosseted her. Would he really have done all that if he _hadn't_ expected Linnebith to rise first?

“Misdirection,” Sh'vek answered simply.

“Misdirection?”

He gave a curt laugh. “Very much the same game that you were playing yourself. It was most entertaining, I assure you: how much you assisted me with your games with Delene and G'dil and the others; how _well_ you were dancing to my tune all the while. Those records you found for Delene were a bit much, I'll give you that. It cost me quite a bit of effort to cover the extra eventualities those created, should anything have happened to you and left me with Delene as my Weyrwoman. Not that G'dil didn't merit his demotion. Tell me, did you actually think it might make her a more competent Weyrwoman, or were you just trying to limit Ormaith's chances with Linnebith?”

There was little point in denying it now. “Both,” Rahnis admitted.

“Mmm. I don't think Faranth herself could do much about the former. Thankfully, we don't need to worry about the latter.” He placed his hands on her shoulders, and drew her closer. “I'm sure you've seen the Bitrans pulling the same trick at Gathers. The mark's never in the cup they keep your attention on. Between the two of us, we have the rest of the Weyr thoroughly gulled. Their eyes are on the empty cup, while I... I hold five-mark piece in the palm of my hand.”

A five-mark piece, was she? Rahnis pulled out of his grip and backed away towards the wall. “I wouldn't count on that! If you imagine I have _any_ intention of letting Ormaith catch Alaireth you're very much mistaken. It'll be a warm day _between_ when that happens. I swear, Sh'vek, I'll see you stripped of your rank and out of this Weyr so fast you'll think you've timed it. You'll be lucky if you manage to beg use of a _wher_ 's den to live in.”

Sh'vek made no attempt to follow her. “ _And who will you choose? // asked the queen of her rider,_ ” he sang softly. “You still see it that way, don't you? You actually think you have a choice!”

“Ormaith will _never-_ ”

“And who's going to stop us? One of the other bronzes? After _today?_ Even if it were only physical strain they had to recover from, a mere matter of days won't be anywhere near long enough. Your preferences don't matter a jot when there's only one bronze who can compete.”

The scope of his actions sickened her. He'd planned this, had known exactly what he was doing when he'd allowed Kiath to come into her mating cycle. It wasn't just about bringing an end to Maenida's tortured life and removing one of his rivals; he'd done it to _ensure_ his continued ascendance as Weyrleader. It was the exact same trick that he and Vallenka had pulled on F'ren when they'd sent him to Ista four turns back, the day Alaireth had risen to mate, only this time writ large enough to encompass an entire Weyr. Rahnis shook her head defiantly. “You're insane if you think I'll let you get away with this! The minute Alaireth gets back here, I _will_ see you finished. I can't stop her rising, and I can't stop Ormaith chasing, but I'll have time enough before that happens to be sharding certain that every dragon on Pern knows what a thread-spawned monster you are!”

“You need to _open your eyes to the gravity of your situation,_ ” he snarled back at her. “You made a very large mistake by coming here this morning. This isn't the impasse you seem to think it is.”

“It's not?”

“Oh, no. You've quite a record, Rahnis.” He strode towards her, counting off on his fingers. “Insubordination, theft of records, conniving with your dragon's cycle, illicit _between_ ing through time. Then there was that mess in Bitra, the blame for which you so cunningly laid on Egritte's head. I think _that_ will have to be looked into again, won't it? And, of course, you attempted to kill Maenida yourself, _and_ stopped me from getting help to her in _time_. I already have M'arsen's record of events, and any queen who touches your mind will see the truth of it in an instant. You can count on Delene's word and Vallenka's against you already, and thanks to your interference Delene can ensure that your very own dragon condemns you. As for Alaireth, she may not be here _yet,_ but she surely used you as a marker. You won't see your dragon again unless and until _I_ permit it, and that's not going to happen a single second before you've given me your full cooperation.”

Sh'vek might be right about Alaireth's return, but he couldn't keep her from her queen indefinitely. Hands on her hips, Rahnis stood her ground. “Are you seriously trying to coerce a weyrwoman? Linnebith will rise before you get that much out of me.”

“Time is not on your side, Rahnis. Not if you want your weyrmate to live.”

“You can't do a thing to him from inside this weyr,” she retorted. “And I _will_ speak up for him at the formal hearing.”

“There won't be one. I have more than enough evidence to condemn Firrenor with, posthumously if necessary. Keep this up, and he'll be staked out for Thread at dawn tomorrow. Push me too far, and I'll even make you watch him die.” He leaned close, his voice low. “The icefields near that abandoned Hold you found will do, even if I have to time it all the way back to midsummer. Thread can't burrow there, so it'll take a direct strike to finish him. Just imagine the terror he'll feel, waiting and watching while the threads rain down all around him, hissing into the ice ever closer to where he lies. Or perhaps I'll give him length of chain enough to move, and we'll see how long he fights for his life...or if he'll try to make a quick death for himself. Fast or slow, it'll get him eventua-”

“Stop it!” she cried, unable to bear hearing any more.

He fell silent, and waited until she met his gaze before speaking again. “You will accompany me when I address the Weyr. You will say what I ask you to say, and stay silent otherwise. If you can satisfy me now, I'm willing to present Maenida's death as a tragic accident, F'ren's actions being a sad consequence of the madness brought on by losing his dragon. He'll still be exiled, but the island I choose for him will have shelter and good enough fishing for him to survive as long as he wishes to do so.

“Until Alaireth rises, you will publicly support Delene as well as myself. You won't go anywhere outside your own weyr unless escorted by either M'arsen or me, you will limit your interactions with the other weyrfolk to the essentials of your duties, and you will instruct your queen _not_ to discuss certain topics with the other dragons. Delene will be listening, as will Ormaith; breach any one of these conditions and the first thing that happens is that Firrenor dies.

“Once you're my Weyrwoman you may manage the Lower Caverns as you see fit, but I will expect to be consulted on any major decisions, and to have the final say on any issue that affects my riders directly. You will be obedient and dutiful and compliant, giving your Weyr the unified leadership it deserves. Indiscretions will _not_ be tolerated and, at the very least, I expect you to convincingly maintain all the usual polite fictions regarding our relationship.”

“You think you can hold me to all of _that_?” Rahnis was aghast. “You can only kill F'ren once, Sh'vek. He may be worth a thousand of you in my eyes, but there are limits to what I'll sacrifice for _any_ man. Alaireth deserves better, and so does the Weyr! My life is _hers;_ it is absolutely not yours. You can do what you want, say what you want, but in the end it will still come down to your word against mine. I'm sure there'll be doubt enough to ruin us both, but that's a sacrifice I _can_ live with.”

“Your word against mine?” He shook his head, and grinned fiercely down at her. “Oh no, I think not.”

“Really? Why is that, Sh'vek?”

He turned and walked back across to the table, sidestepping the blood drying on the floor. “Before we leave this room, you'll prepare a certain document for me,” he said, pulling a chair into position in front of the waiting ink, pen and hides. It was the same one that M'arsen had offered her earlier, Rahnis noticed.

“It will detail every aspect of your crimes,” Sh'vek continued, “crimes you're about to confess to in, oh, a fit of grief-stricken honesty, or something. Don't worry about the exact phrasing; I'll dictate as you go. Should you choose to defy me at some point in the future, it won't be your word against mine. I'll _already_ have your word. You might not like it, but there'll be more than enough truth in it to make it very, very convincing.”

He couldn't _possibly_ think he could force her to do such a thing! The thought of the uses he could put such a document to was utterly abominable. “You think I'll give you the power to do to Alaireth and me what Igen did to Fagreeth and Ankala?” To live her life caged away from her beloved dragon, never again to see or touch each other except by mind, to have her queen's will damped down by the strength of every other gold on Pern, until the day they died...oh, no. And even if he _didn't_ use it, the threat of doing so would be more than enough in and of itself. She'd be a fool to give him even a fraction as much of a hold over her. “I won't do it, Sh'vek. Not that. _Never_ that.”

“You'll do it, Rahnis.” he said. “If you hadn't interfered today it might never have come to this, but you did, and it has. So, if you ever want to see your dragon again, you _will_ do it. Your queen went _between_ times this morning, and she went without you.”

“I saw her coming back to me, Sh'vek. It might not have happened yet, bu-”

“You saw her _visual!_ ” he corrected. “You can't change the past, but nor can you be _certain_ of the future! Alaireth will have used you as a marker but it won't have been her only one. Queens have a stronger time sense than most dragons do, and she'll expect to be back with you in a matter of hours. She might have the strength of will to stretch it by another day, perhaps even by two or three, but sooner or later the conditions of her jump will pass, and _you will feel her die_.”

F'ren and Trath had made just such a jump at Turnover, and had been lucky to survive it. The memory returned to her forcefully, of standing knee deep in snow and thick fog, growing ever more cold and sick with fear with every extra passing minute. If Sh'vek held her here too long...would any dragonrider dare call such a bluff? Oh Faranth, there was no way she could ever take that risk, not with her beloved Alaireth's life hanging in the balance. And Sh'vek knew that too. Of course he did. He could ask anything of her right now, anything at all, and be utterly assured that she would do it. Rahnis groaned in desperation as the last of her resolve shattered, fresh tears blurring her vision. What else could she do? Bringing Alaireth back to the here and now was all that mattered. Worrying about the consequences of her actions – and what else Sh'vek might demand from her –would have to wait. Alaireth came first, Alaireth always came first. “You heartless bastard,” she cried. “How can Ormaith stand you?”

Slowly, Sh'vek extended his hand towards her. “Well, Weyrwoman Rahnis. I believe we have a deal.”

**END OF PART 3**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah. I know. Next chapter will go up two days from now.
> 
> At this point, I imagine a [cute kitten](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McNRDGwitts) [chaser](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL1gPsYmYpM) [(or three)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D36JUfE1oYk) would go down a treat. 
> 
> ...
> 
> Anyway. On with the note. I imagine some of the details of this chapter's reveal caught some of you a little wrong-footed (not Narshalla, perhaps - you came SO CLOSE to nailing him!), but just for the record, Sh'vek's side of the narrative has been 100% honest throughout. There's a limit to how little can be given away in a tight 3rd narrative, which is why you haven't had his POV since chapter 21. The clues are all there in plain sight (you can play 'spot the capital 'W' every time he calls Rahnis 'Weyrwoman', for starters....), but in chapters 15 and 17 the reader gets things filtered by Rahnis' perceptions, and by the time you reach chapter 21...well, assumptions go a long way, don't they? (And boy, did I have to be cagey with some of my answers to comments.) 29 is another Rahnis chapter, but even though she's clearly dropped the ball and proved her fallibility in that one, most of the comments here and elsewhere revealed a wonderful level of trust in the accuracy of her insights. Thank you all for that - it says a lot of good things about how well you've taken who she is to heart. Set against anyone else, it would've been a good bet to make, but I'm afraid to say that Sh'vek is a far tougher opponent than she and (presumably) most readers thought. (Particularly those who thought he hadn't read any Sun Tzu and had only cherry-picked from Machiavelli...yeah, bad call, that one. I'm afraid he's well versed in the entire library, [Rommel](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagnificentBastard) included...) To be honest, I find him rather terrifying, which is a strange thing to say about a figment of one's imagination. He's much smarter than I am, and more ruthless by a similar margin. If he was real, he'd eat me for breakfast - but fortunately, I'm not the one who has to deal with him. 
> 
> So. Can Rahnis find a way out of her predicament? Is there any hope left for Trath and F'ren at all?
> 
> Tune in on Sunday to find out!


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steel yourselves, guys....

_She loved the boy that once he was;_   
_their hearts and dreams were shared._   
_Apprenticed to the Healer Hall,_   
_they learned to care for every ill:_   
_to nurse and ease, to sew and mend,_   
_from birth, through life, to living's end._   
_But parting's pain came all too fast:_   
_no cure exists for broken hearts._

_She loved the man the dragons made,_   
_whose heart could not be shared._   
_A journeywoman of her Hall,_   
_she honed her growing Healer's skill_   
_'gainst fell disease and plague-borne dread,_   
_while he risked all in falling thread..._   
_until the day his dragon passed._   
_No cure exists for broken hearts._

_She'd loved the boy that once he was,_   
_whose heart had not been spared._   
_A master of the Healer Hall_   
_whose learning now could never fill,_   
_nor heal, nor ease, nor ever mend_   
_the empty husk that was her friend._   
_With mercy, parting came at last;_   
_no cure exists for broken hearts._

**  
Afternoon, 13.3.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

   
F'ren ran.

The ground was difficult going. The frozen tips of close-cropped grasses crumbled noisily beneath his feet, interspersed with squelching cracks as he broke through surface ice to the wet mud beneath. It was snowing; only lightly now, but just enough to be an annoyance. His breath misted around him, and he didn't think it a good sign that he couldn't feel the ground beneath his feet, or even anything more than the most vague sense of cold. He wasn't wearing his boots either, which was even more of a concern. He slowed to a walk, immediately forgetting why he'd been running in the first place. His thoughts were as foggy as the air. When had it got so foggy? He could barely see more than his own length ahead of him, and nothing at all beneath the level of his bare thighs.

Bare? That couldn't be right. F'ren looked down once again and saw that he was dressed exactly as he ought to be, as any sane man would be, in his oldest and scruffiest clothes. They were now looking even worse for wear than they had done when he'd pulled them on that morning. Fardling Delene and her so-called bargain! Iynard of Telgar must have laughed all the way back to his Hold. The Weyr might have paid Telgar barely half the price that the same beasts would fetch at a spring Gather, but that was a hefty mark-up when you factored in the cost of keeping them alive long enough to be of any use. Parrick, the Weyr's senior herdsman, had been spitting mad when he'd discovered that Delene had neglected to include the necessary fodder as part of her purchase, and that the animals had been left to fend for themselves ever since she'd bought them. Evidently, if the beasts weren't to starve, they'd have to be brought back to the Weyr right away. That would mean the whole herd going short until the dragons could eat them down to their usual numbers...but better that than leaving the new stock where they were.

F'ren looked around, searching the fog for his Wingmen. Conveying five hundred head of terrified cattle back to the Weyr wasn't anyone's idea of easy work, especially not on the last rest day before Turnover. Sure enough, that made it Snowfall's job. F'ren had warned his Wing to dress for hard, dirty work, but it was only after their arrival at this miserable patch of the north Telgar moors that he'd learned exactly how filthy they were all going to get. The field the beasts had been left in was practically bare, and the animals were losing condition fast. Parrick had taken one look and made the call to slaughter them all then and there. F'ren chuckled to himself, remembering his Wing's dismay when they'd learned the news. Not everyone had heeded his warning that morning, and Ludrenne had been wearing brand-new wherhide. There'd been several disappointed faces amongst the men when she'd decided that she valued her dignity over her clothing and that it was, in fact, far too cold to strip. More than one rider had simply turned to ogling W'rint instead, who'd made the opposite choice and stripped down to shirt and underclothes...at least until F'ren had taken pity on the bluerider's shivers and sent him back to the Weyr for clothes that he didn't mind getting spoiled.

Five hundred head of cattle to slaughter, gut, skin, carve into manageable chunks, and pack with snow into sacks for storage. They'd be less palatable for the dragons that way, but at least they wouldn't deplete the Weyr's resources further. All riders learned butchery as Weyrlings, but it had quickly become clear that even the younger riders were very out of practice, and that sleet and snow made the job even worse than they remembered. On top of that, unless they were very lucky, by the time they were done they'd have missed the evening meal completely.

F'ren squinted down at his left arm, at the tally marks sliced into it, and tried to figure out how far they'd come. He got into the forties before losing track of the grouped lines for the first time. Counting on his fingers didn't help much, either. If he watched his fingers, the tally marks moved. If he kept his eyes on the marks, he lost track of how many fingers he had extended.

It had to be the cold, that. Why else wouldn't he feel all ten of them? Eventually, he gave up on getting a precise count. They were two thirds done, more or less, but it would be full dark before the Wing was finished. Better hurry them up, if he wanted to avoid having any of his riders getting black-bite. He reached for his gloves, and briefly considered putting them on before deciding against it; he couldn't afford to buy a replacement pair right now, and they'd only get wet and bloody, from the cows, and from the blood trickling down the inside of his own forearm, where he'd taken his belt-knife to his own flesh.

What? He'd done _what?_ F'ren froze in disbelief. What kind of madman would carve up his own arm? He blinked, and willed his arm to move. The fog pulled down at him, but slowly and surely he forced his lower arm into view, then twisted it around. There was what was left of his hand, there was the deep, puckered scar left by the threads and the healers, but the stinking dark brown blood that streaked its length as well as the rest of his body was dry, and not his own. F'ren spat into his hand and tried and failed to rub a patch clean. Why was there so much of it? What had happened?

His head hurt, fiercely. He shook it, trying to clear his thoughts, scattering the fine layer of snow that had settled on his hair in the process. The falling motes caught on his shirtsleeves. F'ren frowned. Had his shirt always been that dark reddish-brown colour? _What'd you do, H'koll? Bleed on_ it? He was about to reach for Trath, meaning to remind the dragon of the memory, when he saw movement ahead of him in the fog.

Slowly, it resolved into the shapes of two men leading a large animal forwards. That would be the next heifer for his team then, wherever they'd got to. She twisted and pulled against the ropes of the make-shift halter, dancing sideways almost evasively and making the odd breathy groan. The men, too, were breathing heavily with the exertion of holding her in place. No surprise the animal was spooked. She wasn't as white-eyed as herdbeasts got when a dragon got close, but you could see at a glance that she knew something was wrong. The fog might have hidden the rest of the slaughter from view, but everyone knew that animals weren't as reliant on eyes alone as humans were. Sound and smell were more than enough, and even the dumbest of animals often displayed a remarkable instinct for knowing when their death was approaching. This one knew, F'ren was sure. He gave her an apologetic shrug. It was hard and more than a little unfair on the animal, but it had to be done. There was no grazing left for them here, nor enough to spare back at the Weyr, and death by human hands would be a kinder end than starvation. Kinder perhaps than being hunted down by a dragon.

The herdsmen had her better under control now. F'ren stepped forward. Behind her, in the depths of the fog, he could see M'gan. C'nir was there, too. What were they doing here? They probably had their eyes on her carcass, he decided, but this one was better meat than most, and he wanted her for Trath. Feeling strangely uneasy, he ducked between the ropes holding the animal's head steady and looked for the exact spot that the herdsmen had shown him, that he'd unerringly found several dozen times already today. He had his knife ready; before she could smell the blood already staining his hands, he plunged it into her throat.

F'ren felt it go in. Cold, and hard, and more _wrong_ than painful at first, filling his mind with discordant, sour colours...but the pain, her pain, followed fast behind. Somewhere, far, far away from where he was, a dragon screamed in impotent, agonised fury. He felt Trath's shock, felt the dragon's momentary confusion, and then the hideous, stretched-out moment of comprehension.

F'ren blinked. The beast, the field, the men and the fog, all of it was gone. Maenida was making a hideous, gurgling cry as she gasped for breath and life. He'd missed the artery after all, just like every other time he'd relived the event. Her weight sagged against his arm, and M'gan lunged forward, grabbing for her. She slid sideways and down, her motion completing the action for him. Blood sprayed from her throat. Blood soaked the snowy ground. Blood turned the fog red and hard.

Trath was screaming. Darkness blossomed across F'ren's vision as he tried to encompass the sense of what he was feeling from his dragon and from Kiath. Thwarted lust was the smallest part of it; the rest was all furious rage and grief and the heart-deep pain of a rider's betrayal, a rider's death. Hate was there, too. Kiath's hate. Trath's. The dragons' emotions would have been enough to knock F'ren senseless if Trath had wished his rider to feel them in full, but Trath was pulling as hard on the Impression-bond as he could, mentally clawing and straining in a futile attempt to break away, from F'ren, from Kiath, and from Maenida's imminent death.

F'ren felt his heart and guts twisting into aching knots as his dragon bellowed in desperate anguish. Kiath's loss, Kiath's need, both were impossibly compelling. The core of Trath's mind was a tight knot of revulsion and soul-shattering shame. _I couldn't warn you!_ he thought, desperately trying to make Trath hear him.

Trath pushed him away.

Trath _hated_ him.

Trath was his dragon, Trath understood him perfectly, and Trath hated him anyway. Kiath wouldn't let him do otherwise, and Kiath's needs could not be ignored. She needed Maenida, and Maenida was dying.

Maenida was dead.

Kiath's agony crested as the Weyrwoman's life slipped away, the compulsion to find and to follow and to mend that hideous, heart-breaking breach overwhelming all else. Trath was swept up with it, filled by a need that could never be met. The frozen, pitch black void of _between_ swallowed the dragon's keen entire, but F'ren felt himself voicing it loudly enough for them both.

F'ren screamed his pain into the emptiness, but nothing screamed back. After a time, the silence in his mind became so incongruous that he stopped, no longer entirely certain of why he'd been screaming in the first place. He pulled his belt knife out of its sheath and carved another mark into his arm. There was a reason for doing so, almost certainly. He might have asked his dragon, but Trath wasn't talking to him. Trath wasn't there.

F'ren was lying naked in a frozen muddy field, but Trath wasn't there. He was fully clothed, laughing his way through yet another of Sh'vek's interminable chores in the good company of his Wing; Trath wasn't there either.

He was dreaming. He was having a nightmare. He was _living_ a nightmare, trapped inside his own mind. The herdsmen were leading another animal forwards. He looked for Trath, but Trath wasn't there. F'ren flung his arms up to block the sight, but saw it all anyway. No. Not again. He turned and tried to run, but they'd roped him too well, and he couldn't move an inch.

He wanted to escape, had to escape. He was weeping, in shame and grief and terror.

There was no escape.

Except...he was dreaming, thank Faranth, he was _only dreaming_. None of this was real.

And there was still no escape. Not from the dreams, not from the nightmare of his life. The real nightmare wouldn't start until he woke. Trath wouldn't be waiting for him. Trath wasn't there.

With that realisation, the fog began to clear.

Maenida, and Kiath, and Trath were waiting for him after all.

Waiting for death to come for them all over again.

 

 

 

 

Waking awareness came back to him in fragments. His skull was pounding, and there was a bitter taste in his mouth. He could smell old sweat and musty herbs.

F'ren forced his eyes open. He was lying on the ground, lightly dressed in unfamiliar clothes, with the weight of a heavy blanket covering him from the waist down. Someone had placed another blanket beneath him, but it had got itself rucked up into uncomfortable rolls beneath his hips and spine. There was a basket of glows lying half a length away on the lip of the dragon's couch: a green's or a blue's judging by the size, not that that narrowed things down at all. He scrabbled with his hands and pushed himself into a seated position. Beneath his fingers, the ground was filthy with wind-blown dirt; this weyr hadn't been used in many a turn. He brought up his knees and slowly slumped forward, resting his head on folded arms. Fellis, that was what he could taste, unadulterated by juice or wine and even more astringent than he was accustomed to. The haze of the drug still thickened his thoughts, tugged him back towards sleep. He shuddered involuntarily, his mind reeling away from half remembered nightmares about...about _something_. F'ren choked out a sob, afraid to know, clinging as thoughtlessly as he could to his current amnesiac state. Whatever it was would come back to him soon enough; he didn't deserve any better. He focused on the lumpy feel of the ground beneath him, the tight pinch of the holed sock that one of his toes had worked its way out of, the chill breeze that gusted past him; everything except the silence inside his own skull. It hurt less than he'd ever have imagined it would, as if Trath had never been ripped away from him at all, as if the deep bond of Impression had never been made, leaving nothing behind that was even capable of being broken.

Trath had gone _between_ hating him. As if what he'd done hadn't been unforgivable enough...he'd torn his dragon's heart apart, and made Trath hate him as he died.

Off to his left, the light was brighter. Dust motes danced in the sunlight falling in from the weyr's ledge, driven into a sudden spiralling whirl as the bronze on the ledge fanned out his wings, before tucking them tightly back against his body. F'ren was on his feet before he knew what he was doing.

It wasn't Trath.

F'ren closed his eyes, swallowing back the desperate, futile hope that had risen inside his heart. Of course it wasn't Trath. Trath had gone _between,_ with Kiath. He raised a hand to his brow, shielding his eyes from the light, and took a slow step forwards, then a second. His steps were unsteady, his feet not quite ready to obey the commands of his will...or perhaps they obeyed another's desires, as they carried him, stumbling, towards whatever inevitability awaited him.

The dragon lifted his head lethargically off his forelegs as F'ren drew closer. Telemath's eyes were whirling lavender-blue, palpable sadness radiating off him in every aspect of his bearing, his colour muted even in the bright sunlight of early afternoon. C'nir would be somewhere close, F'ren knew, easing their shared pain with the love and togetherness that only a dragonrider could know.

It was too much to bear. The heart-breaking memory of Kiath's final grief-stricken seconds of life resurfaced in full force, and F'ren dropped to his knees with a wordless howl. He'd shared the echoes of such pain before, whenever Trath had keened another dragon's death, but even the dragons themselves never normally felt the searing agony of loss that he and Trath had shared at Kiath's moment of suicide. Faranth, it was no wonder they always went _between._ No conscious mind would willingly bear such an assault for a single second longer than it had to. He clenched his fists against the ground, shuddering with guilt and shame and self-pity as he forced himself to endure, dragging out the remembered moment as long as he possibly could, while it was still only Kiath's hate and pain and shattered yearning and not yet Trath's as well.

The weight of a man's hand settled on his shoulder. F'ren jerked away instinctively and found himself gasping for air; he'd been concentrating so hard that he'd forgotten to keep breathing. He looked up at C'nir, blinking away his tears until the rider's features finally fell into focus.

“Bad dreams?” C'nir asked. He looked troubled.

F'ren nodded. What other kind were there? “You kept M'gan off me,” he found himself saying, wondering why even even cared enough to ask. “Why?”

C'nir shrugged one shoulder. “I'm not sure. Might have been better for everyone if I hadn't, but none of us was really thinking straight at the time. M'gan still isn't, even with Baxuth back here again. They were too close when Kiath and Trath....” He trailed off uneasily, staring away across the bowl. “If you want me to be honest about it, part of me thought he didn't deserve to be the one that did for you. Kiath hated you, and so did I, until she died. I never want to feel that from any dragon, ever again.”

“Everyone hates me. Trath does. _Did._ ” F'ren forced the last word out, relishing how much it hurt, and wondering how many times he'd have to say it before he stopped feeling anything at all.

“Yeah. Can't imagine the rest of us matter much to you. I'd ask if you were all right, but...I reckon that'd be a pretty stupid question right now.”

“You'd be right. I'm not.”

“I know. Like I said, it was a stupid question.” C'nir dropped to a crouch beside him. “I told Tilga at the time she should've given you more fellis than she did. Partly, I still wanted you dead almost as badly as M'gan did. Mostly, I knew you'd want it even more than us.”

F'ren met the other man's eyes wordlessly. C'nir didn't need to be told that he was right. “You're a lousy executioner, you know,” he said, breaking the growing silence before it could swallow his attention again.

“Sorry. Sh'vek wants you alive,” C'nir said. “At least for now.”

“Ah, does he now?” F'ren asked bitterly. Insightful of the man, to deny him a quick and painless end. “Well, if my Weyrleader demands that I live...they do say that the dragonless need a _good_ reason to keep living.”

His bleak humour brought a hint of a smile to C'nir's lips. “Rahnis hasn't given up on you yet. When did all _that_ happen, you sly thing?”

C'nir was full of stupid questions today. F'ren closed his eyes. No woman could fill the place of a man's dragon. He wasn't heartless enough to burden anyone with the remnants of his life, least of all someone that he actually cared for. “A lifetime ago. Another man, another life. And don't bother trying that again. It won't work. She's not anywhere near enough.”

At length, C'nir sighed, and spoke again. “I'm sorry for what happened, F'ren. Been thinking about it, up here, listening to you scream in your sleep. The more I do, the more I agree with Rahnis. Kiath wasn't going to make it through the flight and you... well, you did what you had to do, didn't you? I'm sorry it didn't save Trath, but maybe it saved Telemath. It might have been me, where you are, now. You could have pulled Trath back and left Kiath to us, or to Baxuth and M'gan. I don't know why you didn't. We owe you for that, I think.”

F'ren opened his eyes again; he hadn't expected to hear anything like that from the man, nor to see the look of genuine compassion on his face.

“Sh'vek wants to make an example of you,” C'nir said as he rose. “I'm not going to stop him from doing that, if you're still around...but I won't stop you, either.” He closed his eyes and murmured a quiet instruction. Behind him, Telemath lifted his belly from the ground and settled back onto his haunches, leaving a clear path to the edge of the ledge. “The drop's sheer all the way down to the bowl, and more than high enough.”

C'nir held out a hand; F'ren took hold of it, and let the other man pull him to his feet. There were tears in C'nir's eyes, F'ren noticed. “Thank you, C'nir,” he whispered.

“He was a fine dragon, Trath was,” C'nir said, clasping his forearm. “You'd have done well by this Weyr, the two of you, had things worked out otherwise.”

F'ren briefly tightened his own grip, then let his arm drop to his side. C'nir gave him a slight nod, then turned away to give him the privacy to make his own choice. Slowly, he walked to the edge of the ledge and peered down over it, leaning into the wind. C'nir was right; they were, indeed, a very long way up. A strong gust temporarily forced him backwards. It would be the easiest thing in the world to simply lean forwards into the cold air, to let it hold him up until Pern itself decided that the weight of his life was too heavy to be borne...but that would be a cowardly way to end things. Instead, he took a step back and looked around.

The Weyr's spindles were in full sun, and bedecked by dragons of every colour barring gold. There were fewer dragons than usual on the wing: no weyrlings or fighting dragons drilling, no greens beckoning suitors into flight, no riders making their own inconsequential errands. The next threadfall had been a little less than two days away – was it still the same day? The Weyr would surely need to make the most of its rest before then. Should he, perhaps, leave instructions for his Wing? No, he decided. He was beyond all of that now. He was empty. Done.

The ledge he was standing on, high up on the east side of the Weyr, was almost directly opposite the Lower Caverns. It wasn't actually all that far from his own weyr: perhaps a dragonlength or two higher, and several dozen further south. Several dragons were busy in the feeding grounds but the broad expanse of ground running from there to the weyrling barracks was empty, and the weyrlings themselves were still absent from the Weyr. C'nir had chosen the spot well.

F'ren stretched one arm out in front of him, feeling the air rushing past and imagining himself a-dragonback once again. It didn't quite hold the same bite as it would when mounted on a dragon flying at full speed, but he hoped that it might come close enough before the end. The cold air was numbing, almost like _between,_ almost like the empty silence of his mind. He reached out for Trath, and found only dark and frozen emptiness. Unsurprising, perhaps, considering where the dragon had gone. He wondered if he would find him there again, once he was dead.

Some said that that was what happened, that even death couldn't separate a dragon from his rider, but F'ren had never cared for such ghoulish speculation. Besides, no-one living could ever truly know the truth...and he wasn't even sure if he wanted it to be that way, anyway. He laughed, remembering the last taste he'd had of his dragon's mind: what a punishment that would be for the both of them, reunited for an eternity of pain and hate! No, he wouldn't do that to his Trath. It would be better by far if they could each find their oblivion alone. If death _would_ reunite them...how long would it take, for a dragon to forget his own death, his own life? Could he make himself live long enough to give Trath that much? Was that why suicide was still only a yawning temptation, and not an urgent need? Because part of him knew that Trath still wouldn't want him, even in death?

Faranth only knew.

F'ren stared blankly down into the Bowl. A small crowd of weyrfolk had begun to exit the Lower Caverns, and his eyes were drawn to one figure amongst the many as she hitched up long skirts and broke into a run. He couldn't see who she was, not at such a distance, but nor could he tear his eyes away. Something important was about to happen. There was something she was about to do. The wind was making his eyes water again, and the distant figure of the woman blurred in his sight. She almost seemed to be in two places at once, both running and still at the same time.

F'ren blinked and rubbed at his eyes with the heel of one hand, and when he looked down again he saw that his second impression had been the correct one of the two. She'd come to a halt...but she hadn't yet raised an arm skywards, beckoning and calling as he knew she soon would, and then...and then...oh, then she did and all the light and warmth and air in the world came back to him, and there were dragons in the sky again.

“First Egg!” C'nir bellowed. _“First Egg!_ ”

F'ren raised his eyes to the sky above his head. Alaireth shone bright gold in the sunlight as she arced gracefully through the sky. The descent of the dragon flying beside her was almost embarrassingly awkward by comparison, but F'ren didn't care in the slightest. The dragon was Trath, and that was all that mattered. His hide was grey with exhaustion; he was utterly wrung out in body and spirit...but he was alive. _Trath was still alive!_

“F'ren? Where are you- _shells_ , F'ren, stop!”

F'ren felt himself jerked roughly backwards by a hand grabbing at his borrowed shirt. He batted ineffectually at C'nir, but the man didn't get the hint and instead continued to haul him even further away from his dragon. “Let me go, C'nir!” he snarled. “I have to get to Trath!”

“Not like that you sharding don't!” C'nir exclaimed. “We'll take you down, get you there as fast as we can, I promise, as soon as you stop being a such an utter deadglow. Your dragon's the one with the wings, remember?”

F'ren only half comprehended the other man's words, taking in little beyond the message that help was being offered. He kept his eyes fixed on Trath, mentally calling out his dragon's name with all the force he could muster, and craning his neck to peer over Telemath's body when the dragon got in his way. Trath's mind was cold and hard, and he couldn't find a way in. He followed C'nir up onto the other bronze's neck as fast as he could manage, knowing he'd have a better view of his own dragon from there. C'nir insisted on fastening a loop of his straps through F'ren's belt; F'ren scowled impatiently at him, frustrated by the wasted time. Trath hadn't yet replied to his call, but the dragon was hurting badly, he could tell. Kiath's death was still fresh in Trath's memory, and his suffering would grow no shorter with every second of delay.

C'nir's thump against his dragon's neck was all the warning F'ren had before Telemath plunged over the ledge into a sharply angled glide. Ahead of them, Alaireth and Trath were already backwinging onto the ground. F'ren couldn't understand how any of it was possible. He'd felt Kiath go _between,_ following Maenida into death. Overwhelmed by the queen dragon's will, Trath had been compelled to follow. And yet, there he was. Just there. So near, and still so far away.

F'ren closed his eyes and reached out once again for his dragon's mind. The walls of loss and hate and confusion were still present but he could sense layers to them now: shadings of a different dragon's mind as well as Trath's own. And, beneath the echoes of Kiath's agonising loss lay the same singular need that had driven the queen _between_ , that had held them together ever since Impression. Trath needed him still, even after everything he'd done.

Telemath landed, and C'nir freed F'ren to dismount. In his haste, F'ren misjudged the descent from the dragon's neck and wrenched a knee as he sprawled onto the wet, stony ground, but his dragon was too close now for him to care about anything else. Three dragonlengths separated them, no more than that. F'ren got back to his feet and limped onwards towards Trath as fast as his body could manage, knowing that each painful step left one less still to make. Softly, gently, he opened his heart and offered up everything that Trath meant to him, a love so vast and absolute that the only way to hold it all lay within the single, small word that defined the dragon's name. _Trath?_

Two lengths left. Then one. Trath shuddered and lifted his head.

_F'ren? He will speak, soon. He loves you and he needs you. Go to him, F'ren._

It was Alaireth speaking to him, not Trath. The touch of the queen's mind was a gentle caress that reached deep into his spirit, laying bare all of the hurt and broken places inside him. He could sense how tightly she was holding Trath together, how much she needed to attend to her own rider...and how close she'd come to returning to the Weyr alone. He stumbled the last few steps to his dragon's head, all the walls of pain and fear and guilt and shame slipping aside, and reached up to stroke Trath's jaw. Purple-red facets reflected his face back to him.

_F'ren._

He could feel Trath forcing himself not to flinch away from the mental contact. The dragon's mind was a tumult of emotion, with scarcely a coherent thought to be found. Of those he could actually make sense of, few were pleasant, or welcome to either of them. F'ren closed his eyes, and leaned close against Trath's skin. _I'm sorry, Trath. I'm so, so sorry! I know it was wrong, so wrong, but I couldn't let you die with them._

The dragon's response was slow to take form. _I know. Kiath...she was too much. Too strong. I couldn't help but hate you, couldn't help but follow. She'd lost Maenida, and we had to find her. I tried to make her come back to the Weyr, but Maenida was already gone, and she made me obey. I went_ between _with her._

 _I know._ What choice had his dragon had? Better to follow Kiath into death than to come back to a man like him.

 _She wouldn't_ let _me go to you! She was my queen, mine, and I was hers. I needed you, and she wouldn't let go! I loved you and I hated you, and she loved Maenida and needed her more than life. I tried to find Maenida, tried to find my way back here, but I couldn't do either. I couldn't help her. I couldn't find you. She wouldn't_ let _me find you!_

Trath dipped his head, and nuzzled F'ren's body. _But then Alaireth heard me. She helped me find the way back._

Wordlessly, the dragon showed him what had occurred. As hard as Trath had fought it, Kiath had made F'ren anathema to them both. She had slipped, raging, into oblivion, and although her driving instinct to be reunited with her rider no longer held any clear direction beyond her own suicide, Trath had been forced to follow, his own mind stretching out in an echo of the dying queen's need. His touch on Alaireth's mind while the queen made her own jump _between_ times had been the merest of brushes, but the _purpose_ of Alaireth's own jump – back to the Weyr and the woman she needed – had been close enough to Kiath's needs and his own for the connection to resonate and grow, and for Alaireth to sense him in return and to draw on her own claim upon him as a bronze who had chased and won her in the past. It had been enough, just barely enough, to bring him back to the Weyr.

Tears flowed unchecked down F'ren's face. He could sense Trath's fear, lingering beneath the surface of his conscious thought, that Kiath's suicidal pull might still wait for him in the timeless emptiness of _between._ There were edges and angles and gaping, bleeding wounds in the dragon's mind, doubts and emotions and memories that time could never completely erase. The strength of the dragon's love for him was a desperate thing, drawing deeply on the connection forged at the moment of Impression, and finding it unforgivably wanting.

 _I'm here, Trath._ He sent the thought as strongly as he could. _It's been a long time since then, and all people change, even dragonriders. Don't look for Firrenor, for the me-that-was. You made me better than that. You made me F'ren, and I'm always, always here for you._

_You are. You're my F'ren, and you'd do anything for me. Terrible things. Is that right? Is that what I should want? But oh, my F'ren, I do, and I'd do the same for you!_

Terrible things, indeed. But, there could be no going back from that moment, only forwards. _We'll figure it out, I promise, however long it takes. Who we are, and who we want to be. Together._ Still clinging tightly to Trath's head, F'ren opened his eyes, and lost himself in the slow whirling of the dragon's troubled, faceted gaze.

 


	35. Chapter 35

_Centuries we've lived in plenty_   
_Now are drawing to a close_   
_Holds, attend your Harper's lessons_   
_Frugal living serves you best_   
_Fill your granaries to brimming_   
_Set sufficient seeds aside_   
_Now the time to make all ready_   
_Verdant be your Holds no more_   
_Dragons brave must soon protect us_   
_Every turn the Red Star grows_

_Centuries we've lived in plenty_   
_Give your Weyr the bounty due_   
_Holds, attend your Harper's lessons_   
_Give your Weyr the bounty due_   
_Tithe the best of every harvest_   
_Give your Weyr the bounty due_   
_Now the time to make all ready_   
_Give your Weyr the bounty due_   
_Dragons brave must soon protect us_   
_Every turn the Red Star grows_

 

**Afternoon, 13.3.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

   
Even at the best of times, there was no such thing as a perfect community. Over the course of nearly twenty turns' tenure as Weyrleader, Sh'vek had done everything he could to hold his riders and weyrfolk to what he deemed an acceptable standard, with varying degrees of success. Most of the time, their failures could be explained – and more rarely excused – as the expected character flaws of individuals; weaknesses of wit or will that resulted in trouble of one kind or another. That was only to be expected: expected, predicted if possible, and the culprits dealt with appropriately. But, there were certain things that Sh'vek absolutely _would not permit_ within the bounds of _his_ Weyr. A rider allowing his dragon's hide to crack; a rider disobeying a direct order during Threadfall; incompetence at any level that threatened the Weyr's effectiveness.

 _Sharding_ dragons returning from their fardling _deaths_ had not, until now, been on the list.

Gritting his teeth, Sh'vek tried and failed to negate the evidence of his own eyes. F'ren's Trath had, impossibly, returned to the Weyr alive, and the dragon showed no sign of vanishing again, no matter how hard Sh'vek willed him to.

This shouldn't be happening, _couldn't_ be happening _._ He looked across the bowl, to where Ormaith was poised in a crouch at the very edge of Kiath's otherwise empty ledge, wings half-raised and tail lashing for balance. _How?_ he demanded of the dragon. _You told me Trath was_ dead _!_

 _I thought he was!_ Ormaith settled back onto his haunches and stared up at the sky. _I see I was wrong._

Ormaith's mind was enviably clear of Sh'vek's own flabbergasted dismay. Between one heartbeat and the next, the surprise that had coloured the dragon's thoughts had faded to nothing as the dragon blithely accepted Trath's impossible return as fact, and just as quickly dismissed him as any immediate concern. Sh'vek wasn't certain that was wise, especially not right now, not when so much still hung in the balance. _Like that isn't fardling obvious to the whole Weyr right now! Get me some answers, and get them now._

 _What else would I be doing, Sh'vek?_ Ormaith snapped back _. What little I could see of h_ _is rider's mind earlier held nothing but the madness of dragonloss._ _Did you expect me to predict_ this _? To know then it was Kiath's loss he felt, and_ not _his own? Do you want me to concern myself with_ that _pitiful excuse for a dragon, when we may soon have an enraged, defiant queen to worry about?_

Sh'vek sent back an apology. Ormaith's mind was hardening with determination, drawing deeply on the reserves of mental strength and stamina that the bronze had built up over decades of leading the Weyr's dragons, further honed by the last half-turn's trials. The balm of Linnebith's presence had eased the rawness of the Weyr's grief for its senior queen, but Sh'vek could sense that Ormaith still ached for Kiath's loss, and the task ahead would be difficult under the best of circumstances. He'd already asked too many hardships of Ormaith today.

Keeping his eyes on the sky above, he made his way closer to where Rahnis was waiting for her dragon to land. A stray shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds, setting the queen and the bronze beside her agleam as they continued their slow, spiralling descent. He muttered a curse under his breath. Trath ought still to be _between_ with Kiath, lost forever. If any dragon deserved to come back from that, it was a queen, surely.

He'd never see Kiath again, either in flight or at rest. The thought brought with it a cutting pang of grief, far deeper than he was comfortable feeling. Maenida had been a good, loving woman, placing him second only to Kiath in her devotions, even though she'd never truly owned much of his own heart. He'd had time enough to grow used to the idea of life without her, hadn't he? To accept that he'd never again feel her warmth beside him, either in body or spirit. Never hear her voice, her laughter, her exasperated sighs, or the steady rhythm of her breathing late at night. Never again sense the pride she took in him, or the reliance she placed on him. There'd been little enough of any of it over the last half turn, and what there was had all been marred by her injury. And yet...now that she was gone, her absence was everywhere. Even the heavens had wept, earlier, as if to make up for his own dry eyes. Everything had fallen apart, and she wasn't ever coming back to him. _Forgive me, Maenida,_ he begged the yawning emptiness inside of him. _It wasn't meant to end this way, I promise you. Not like it did. Never like that._

He'd raged for months against the reality of her injury, unwilling to let go, or to stop hoping for her recovery, and nothing he'd done had been of any use at all. It was only after he'd accepted that Maenida's mind had been irretrievably crippled, that her future held nothing beyond the misery of a tragic, lingering decline, that the idea had even occurred to him. If Maenida could only build up her strength, become well enough in herself that Kiath would rise, and strong enough to hold her connection to the queen through the rigours of mating, there might be a chance that the fractured mental bond between them could be repaired, or even re-forged entirely anew. A slim chance, perhaps, but he'd owed it to Maenida to try it.

At first Kiath had been reluctant to leave her weyr, troubled by Maenida's condition, but the urge to mate had grown inevitably. He'd waited as long as he'd dared, while Ormaith held Kiath back, until he'd been forced to accept the inevitable truth. He'd _felt_ the disjointed panic of Maenida's mind filtered through Ormaith's perceptions: a once-whole woman who was now a broken, clinging thing, riddled with fear and frustrated, animal lust. The only coherent strand to it was her desperate demand that Kiath not leave her. Ormaith had used Maenida's fear, that hideous symptom of the breach between woman and dragon, to focus and strengthen his own will upon the queen, commanding her to _stay_. That had been the foundation on which Maenida had built her own, tenuous link to the queen; fragile ground, and not destined to last.

Ormaith might still have succeeded in flying her, even then – after nearly thirty turns as a mated pair and half a turn more of forcing Kiath's will more often than any dragon should ever have had to have done, he was arguably the _only_ dragon that could have flown her in that state and survived – but no rider could risk his dragon on so small a chance as that. A successful flight had, perhaps, always been the least likely of outcomes, but at least he'd _tried_ to make it work. After that, leaving had been the only option left to him, abandoning Maenida to what ought to have been a quick and merciful death: she'd have experienced the rapture of flight one final time, subsumed by the love of her dragon, and become lost to unthinking, unfeeling madness as soon as the sad but inevitable moment came when Kiath finally lost her grip on her rider's mind.

Instead, that thread-spawned bastard had _killed_ her. He'd killed her, painfully and brutally, and he hadn't even had the decency to lose his own dragon in the process. F'ren had torn away another part of his life, another person he'd loved; it was A'minek all over again. F'ren _deserved_ to be dragonless, shard it! And what could he himself do about it now? Have the pair of them tried and wing-clipped and grounded for good, then transferred to Igen to stand every noon watch going in some sweating armpit of a cothold for the rest of their lives? Even that miserable prospect was a far, far better fate than the man deserved.

Still several dragonlengths above the ground, F'ren's bronze banked awkwardly. It was small compensation to witness how thoroughly Kiath's death and that single jump _between_ times had changed Trath from a bronze in his prime to a faded wreck. Sh'vek finally found himself agreeing with Ormaith's instant assessment: _that_ problem could safely be set aside at least until the dragon recovered, when he'd make fardling sure both man and beast wished the bronze had never returned.

Right now, however, Alaireth remained the greater concern. The queen would undoubtedly be furious as soon as she learned what he'd done, but she couldn't be permitted to rage unchecked on her rider's behalf. Sh'vek had given Rahnis strict instructions on that score, but he wasn't yet entirely convinced that the weyrwoman would control her dragon as she'd promised, or even if she _could_. A rider had no fiercer advocate than their dragon, and he knew he'd hurt Rahnis, deeply. But, by Faranth, the woman had earned it! Any decent weyrwoman ought to have left the Weyr with her queen that morning. Instead, she'd lingered behind with profligate disregard for her queen's safety, given up on Maenida's chances with an ease that galled him, and had even been willing to commit an act almost as unconscionably vile as F'ren's. It had been her choice to repeatedly interfere, and if the consequences of opposing him weren't to her liking, she had only herself to blame. Breaking down the woman's defiance had been a necessary evil, the fastest and most effective way to take control of the situation she'd put them in. She'd left him little choice in the matter, and in no mood to be merciful. There'd been no mercy for Maenida.

Rahnis looked briefly towards him as he approached her, then turned immediately back to the sky. He didn't stop until he was right beside her, closer than he thought she'd be comfortable with, but not enough to actively threaten. She was watching her dragon with an almost childish delight, tears beading beneath her eyes. She didn't acknowledge him properly, but her posture visibly stiffened and she crossed her arms defensively. Rahnis had followed his instructions meekly enough since leaving his weyr – Faranth knew, she couldn't afford to do otherwise – but the real test of his hold over her was always going to be what happened in the hours and days after her queen returned to the Weyr. Sh'vek wasn't certain how much of her behaviour was genuine, and how much was merely an act designed to appease him while she bided her time and tried to figure out a way out of her predicament. Alaireth would make her Weyrwoman within days. She'd be rash indeed to act any sooner than that – not that the coming flight would solve any of her problems – but he wasn't such a fool not to expect her to fight back however she could.

Overhead, sunlight glinted off Alaireth's eyes; Sh'vek felt a sudden sharp spike of alarm from Ormaith. _Anything I should worry about?_

 _Not_ yet, the bronze replied, keeping his thoughts as tight and private as he could. _She senses her rider's displeasure at your presence and does not like that I rebuffed her enquiry._ _Trath's return may work in our favour_. _The jump through times without her rider was straining enough, and she exhausted herself further bringing him back with her._

_I'll want to know how she did that later. Not yet, but definitely soon._

_The support that Trath needs of her consumes her attention for now. Telemath brings Trath's rider, with my permission._

_Good!_ _So we have a little time yet to prepare? I'm going to have a_ serious _talk with Rahnis about what her queen did, later. Use it! Queens should never endanger themselves like that._

 _I shall. No dragon should ever go_ between _alone, certainly not_ between _times, least of all a queen. Alaireth must answer to me for that._

 _If she pushes again, tell her I was forced to discipline Rahnis for her attempt on the Weyrwoman's life. That will need to be addressed sooner or later in any case, and there's no sense letting her test you if it doesn't signify. Remember she's a queen, and proddy, and play it to your advantage: make sure she feels your admiration in equal measure to your disapproval. I've not met one yet who doesn't believe she's better than every other dragon around, or thinks she can be outmanoeuvred except when she chooses to be._ _Hold firm, watch, and wait._

Sh'vek turned his attention back to the weyrwoman. “Rahnis,” he said softly, “I see Alaireth has company. That' _s_ an unprecedented development. We all thought Trath dead.” He paused, then added: “You can give me the truth of what happened later, in private. Right now, I'd like to know how you care to explain it to the Weyr.”

“Are you not going to tell me?” she said, keeping her eyes fixed on her queen.

“I asked you the question.” He let a note of warning colour his tone. “Answer it.”

“There's always the truth.”

Sh'vek raised an eyebrow, and waited.

Her face tightened and she lost the last traces of her wistful smile. “Half-truths, then. He found Alaireth's mind in his distress, and jumped to where she was waiting things out on the Southern Continent. He was too weak to return any sooner.”

“Hmm.” He'd been thinking along similar lines himself, but this way she was complicit in the lie right from its beginnings. C'nir or S'kloss might think to wonder why her queen hadn't passed on word of Trath's survival sooner, but it was a good enough place to start. “That will do. I'll see that F'ren doesn't contradict you. Make _sure_ your queen says the same, should anyone ask. I don't need to remind you what will happen if she causes me any problems today, do I?”

She struggled to maintain her composure, swallowing back her defiance with difficulty. “No, Weyrleader.”

The meek facade was back again. It didn't fool him for a second, but neither did it matter; for now, at least, he still held the upper hand, and both of them knew it.

Alaireth backwinged, driving gusts of air that sent ripples across the surface of the nearest puddles. Sh'vek stepped away, giving the arriving dragons plenty of room. If Alaireth did escape Rahnis' control, it wouldn't be wise to be _too_ close. Trath followed close on her tail, kicking up a muddy splash as he slewed to a halt. He slumped to his belly on the ground, wings loose at his side and flight muscles trembling with exhaustion. Dragons were quick to recover from trauma, but Trath wouldn't be anywhere close to full fitness before the next Threadfall, let alone Alaireth's flight. Shard it, there was always _something_ to worry about. He kept his eyes on the queen, ready to support Ormaith at the slightest sign of trouble.

It wasn't long in arriving. Alaireth had waited until Trath had been reunited with his rider before giving her full attention to her own, but she clearly hadn't wasted any more time before learning what had happened in her absence. The queen was up on her feet in an instant, head swinging his way, her eyes a lambent orange.

_How dare you!_

Sh'vek couldn't tell whether she'd addressed him or Ormaith, but Alaireth's mental voice was as clear as he'd ever heard from another dragon. He took a deep breath, and let his dragon give her their answer.

 _I dare because I have that right! This Weyr flies and fights at_ my _command, and you_ will _listen to me. Your rider's actions today were contemptible, as were your own._

_Contemptible?_

Ormaith held firm as the exchange intensified, layering his thoughts with as much self-assurance as he could manage, offering the queen respect without the slightest hint of deference. _A queen does not risk herself, not ever, and certainly not for so little reason as a single dragon's life. It is not a bronze dragon's place to command a queen, but neither is it a junior weyrwoman's place to disobey her Weyrleader. Your Weyr needs your strength and your skills. Your rider needs your better judgement._

 _We do_ not _need yours._

Her anger was a palpable weight, pressing down like the worst headache he'd ever suffered. He was a small, despicable thing, to be scorned and crushed and driven away. Faranth, was Rahnis even trying? _Push her, Ormaith._

_What with?!_

Sh'vek stared the queen in the eyes, and steeled himself to move close enough to _make_ Rahnis see sense. A sudden sharp pain lanced through his head somewhere behind his ears, sending him staggering backwards, but it was gone again almost as abruptly as it had appeared. When his vision cleared the queen was gone. He found her airborne, making for her weyr from the look of it. Rahnis was walking towards him, and Ormaith was a quiet, subdued presence at the back of his mind.

He grabbed her firmly by the arm as soon as she came within his reach. She winced at his touch; he'd forgotten she'd been hurt earlier. “Unwise, Rahnis,” he hissed into her ear. “Did I not warn you what it would cost you to defy me publicly like this?”

“That went no further than the four of us,” she answered in a quiet, hard voice, refusing to meet his eyes. “I know full well you'll make me suffer for this, but Alaireth agreed that it needed saying. We do _not_ need your judgement, and you do _not_ have this right. The fact that you're doing this anyway... is something that we _will_ deal with, as and when we can.”

“Is that so?”

Finally, she looked him in the face. “Make the most of it, Sh'vek, because I promise you, _it will not last._ ”

He let go of her with a low growl; he'd wasted too much time on her already. “Get back to your duties. M'arsen will be expecting you. You can report back to me personally when you're done preparing for the Steward's visit.” A fine time the man had picked! Thread would fall the day after next, he didn't have a single Wingleader currently fit to fly, the rest of the Weyr's dragons were only marginally better off...and still the Lower Caverns insisted on draining his resources further. Add to that an angry gold.... _Faranth, Ormaith, she'd better not have hurt you doing that._

_All she did was push me aside. It was you she was angry at._

_Don't I know it. I suppose it could've gone worse. Somehow._

Ormaith sent back a burst of amusement. _You worry too much. Did you not see the implications? For however long the rest of the Weyr recognises my authority, Alaireth_ will _do the same. Her rider's promise that that will change is an empty threat; she greatly dislikes being helpless, that is all._

 _She greatly dislikes_ me.

_That too!_

_And she's right about our authority, dragon-of-mine. It was Telemath that last flew Linnebith, not you._

_Does that matter? It's Alaireth that will rise, and me that will catch her._

_We've Thread to survive before then._ Sh'vek stopped in his tracks and looked back towards F'ren and Trath. A small crowd of spectators had gathered a few dragonlengths off. _Get them out of here and back to their weyr before someone decides to try talking to them. And help me think of some way to keep C'nir and Telemath occupied._

It was impossibly unfair. Of all the dragons that had ever got themselves lost _between,_ all of the riders who'd made that single, fatal mistake...why did it have to be _them_ who'd made it back alive?

 

 

 

 

Sh'vek set the tray down upon the table, taking care not to disturb the documents that littered its surface, or the woman sprawled across table and records alike. Relaxed by sleep and kindly lit by the ageing glows, Rahnis' features held nothing of the previous day's sullen rage, nor even the short-lived vulnerability that had followed on the heels of her defeat. She certainly didn't possess the tranquil beauty of Maenida's youth, let alone Delene's delicacy, but the emotions that brought her face to life would be far slower to fade. Not that he thought her likely to smile again any time soon, at least not in his company.

 _She was deliberately avoiding you, wasn't she?_ Ormaith said.

 _Oh, yes._ M'arsen had reported back to him on the weyrwoman's make-work throughout the evening. It had been well past midnight's shift change when he'd finally given up on her ever reporting back to him that night, and had sought her out for himself. He'd found her much as she was now. The blanket he'd draped over her shoulders had slipped away while she slept, but Rahnis herself didn't appear to have moved since he'd seen her last. Sh'vek took in the angle of her head and shoulders with a wince; she'd suffer for it when she woke. _She won't fall asleep again here in a hurry,_ he thought to Ormaith. _But next time, I'll make my instructions more explicit._

Sh'vek unshuttered the fresh glows, poured himself a drink and sat down, content to wait for the light and the rich aroma of the klah to do their work. Curious, he reached across and picked up one of the records the weyrwoman had been reading, and held it up to the light. A barely literate scrawl covered the hide in irregular, ink-smeared lines: one of Weyrwoman Katrin's better contributions to the Weyr's records. Sh'vek chuckled; he hadn't realised Rahnis had got as desperate as that. He tossed it back towards the table and took a sip of his klah.

 _Alaireth still asleep too?_ he asked Ormaith.

_You saw that for yourself only a few minutes ago. Yes, she's still asleep. Yesterday exhausted her._

_A good thing for both of us, that._ He picked up another of the record-hides, wondering what the weyrwoman had been looking for. This one was a lot more recent, dating from almost ten turns prior to the start of the current Pass: a copy of a collective missive signed by all six Weyrwomen of that time and addressed to the Conclave of Lords Holder, outlining the tithe increases expected by the Weyrs in the turns ahead. It had, fortunately, been a lot more effective than the frankly dreadful duty-songs that Fort Weyr had demanded the Harper Hall produce several turns prior to that. But, if there was a link between the tithe demand and Katrin's terse and simplistic record of a months' worth of comings and goings in the Weyr, or with the comparative essay regarding the best colour distributions for Pass and Interval Weyrs that he found on the next nearest record to hand, he couldn't tell what it was.

When he looked up from the records again, he found Rahnis glaring at him, her head still resting on folded arms.

“Good morning, Weyrwoman,” he said. The challenges posed by a human opponent were so much more satisfying than the mindlessness of Thread.

Ormaith was quick to pick up on his thought. _Thread will stop falling long before she stops challenging you, you know._

 _It will be an entertaining time then, won't it?_ _As far as I'm concerned, she can fight me as long and as hard as she likes...but I doubt she'll keep it up quite that long._

Rahnis turned her face away from him and mumbled something unintelligible. He imagined he was better off not knowing. “Did you find it?” he asked.

She lifted her head, and stiffly pushed herself back into her chair. “Find what?”

“Whatever particular precedent it was you were looking for.” She would surely have realised by now that her weyrmate's situation had changed. Sh'vek might no longer be free to abandon him to die unpleasantly somewhere far from the Weyr, but that didn't mean F'ren could simply pick up his life and carry on with it as if nothing had happened. Or perhaps she was still more concerned with her own plight. It didn't really matter; aside from the small matter of who flew her queen, a Weyrwoman's authority always came second to that of her Weyrleader during a Pass. “Well?”

Rahnis gathered the scattered documents and started putting them back in order. “Strangely enough, no, I didn't. I can only imagine that no-one else has _ever_ dared to interfere in a queenrider's life in such a manner.”

“You have your dragon and your duties, exactly the same as any other rider. Whatever I decide to do with him after his trial, F'ren _will_ live – thanks to Alaireth – so you have what you wanted there, too.” If he had to live, the important things were that the man suffered sufficiently, and that his punishment _stuck._ Postponing the trial until after Alaireth's flight was no great hardship. And, if he was really lucky, Thread would ground the pair permanently – or better – well before Sh'vek did so himself. “I may be enforcing the separation, but you did give up on him first.”

“Give up?” Her dark eyes glinted with fury. “Oh, _please._ Don't castigate me for prioritising Alaireth.”

 _She's definitely planning_ something _, Ormaith. Whatever it is, you'd fardling better win that flight._ Sh'vek handed over the demographics essay before she could snatch it out of his hands, certain that he'd figure out its relevance eventually. “Is your life _really_ any different, Rahnis, in any way that matters?”

She slammed both hands down on the table, hard. “Yes, it matters!” she hissed. “It matters when every single choice I value has been stripped from me by a thread-spawned criminal with the most warped idea of justice that I've ever seen!”

“Klah?”

She blinked stupidly at him for a few seconds, then shook her head. “You can take your klah, and yourself, and all of your empty courtesies _between_!”

So, she'd already noticed, in spite of her indignation; he'd been wondering how quickly that would happen. Sh'vek smiled to himself, and poured her a cup anyway. “I don't imagine your night was particularly comfortable,” he said, setting the steaming mug down on the table beside her, “but I did what I could.”

A brief shiver crossed her shoulders. He picked the fallen blanket up off the floor and folded it loosely. It was a very nice piece of crafting, the fine wools woven in a pleasing pattern of blues and greens that wasn't common in the north. “Yours, I believe?”

She took it from his hands and hugged it into her lap. Sh'vek lifted his mug and swallowed another mouthful of klah. Her eyes tracked his hand with a clear look of envy.

“It won't taste any better cold, you know,” he said. “The provenance may not please you, but klah is klah.”

Grimacing, she reached out and clasped the mug before her with both hands, then took a cautious sip. He could see that the taste surprised her; he'd had it made barely half as strong as he preferred it himself. She drained it fully before setting the mug down again. “What do you want?”

Now _there_ was a question! It would be good to know exactly what she was up to, but whers would fly before she answered that one. “Right now? Some basic courtesy in return would be pleasant.”

“Delene's good at facades,” she muttered.

“I see we still have to work on yours.”

Rahnis gave him one of the least convincing smiles he'd ever seen. “What else?” she asked.

“I was expecting you to report back to me last night. You didn't. Why?”

She gave him the obvious answer. “You told me to report back when I'd finished the preparations for Damrel's visit.”

“Cut the wher-shit, Rahnis. You knew exactly what I meant. I suggest you try harder to meet my expectations in future.”

He drank again, watching her over the brim of his cup, wondering what sort of reminder might be required. The documentation she'd provided him with was more than enough to ensure she danced to his tune, but the precise steps were still unfamiliar to them both. The whole situation was far too delicately balanced, and any action he took against her now would have consequences later. There was little she could do to defy him while still a junior weyrwoman, but if he pushed her any harder than he had to now, he'd be in a whole fall's worth of trouble holding onto his knots in _another_ turn's time. No. Right now, it wasn't worth his while to worry about trivialities.

He didn't need to tell _her_ that, though. Sh'vek set his empty mug down on the table. “You were afraid, weren't you?”

She didn't answer. As stubborn, wilful and determined to turn the tables on him as she was, at least the woman _knew_ when she was beaten. He shook his head. “Really, Rahnis. You should know better than that. How does fearing me help your cause?”

The weyrwoman's brows lifted. “I prefer to think of it as being _pragmatic_. The less time we spend in each other's company, the better, as far as I'm concerned.”

There was an interesting edge to her voice that reminded him abruptly of how close her queen was to rising. “And how will we ever learn to work together doing that? You need to start trusting me, Rahnis.”

“Trusting you?”

“Why not?” Sh'vek shrugged, and refilled both their cups. He'd made his point, even if it wasn't an argument he was likely to win any time soon. “I'm not the monster you imagine me to be. Trust me or not, it's your choice, Rahnis. I'm sure you'll grow accustomed to my company eventually.”

“Please don't talk to me about _choices_!” she snapped.

He opened his hand and conceded the issue. “Damrel's due here at noon. How _much_ more needs to be attended to this morning?”

“I need to check the day's rosters before finalising the schedule, that's all,” Rahnis said, flushing ever so slightly.

It was trivial thing indeed, hardly something that ought to have kept her up half the night. “Good,” Sh'vek said. “That leaves us plenty of time to make up for last night.”

She shot him a sharp look, her fingers tightening perceptibly around her mug.

Sh'vek pretended not to notice. “I want to know _how_ your queen did what she did, yesterday. Trath did more than simply jump _between_ times. Your queen _changed_ things, stopped him dying with Kiath at a time when she wasn't even there. How?”

She sucked in a deep breath, and let it out in a sigh. “Faranth, I'm not sure I understand it myself. I'd never have asked it of her, not when she's so close to rising. With Kiath there too, it might have ended even more disastrously.”

“Your caution's well and....” Sh'vek trailed off, eyes narrowing. “Wait. _Asked_ it of her? You see changing the course of events as something you could _ask_ your queen to do, just like that?”

The question seemed to take her by surprise. “Of course not! You can't change anything you know for a certainty to have happened. Malia was absolutely right about that. You can only change things which haven't happened yet, otherwise I could've tried bringing M'ton back sooner than I did. I might have....”

Bring back _M'ton?_

Sh'vek stifled his shock hastily as the weyrwoman's voice died away. She met his eyes evenly, a sad smile on her face. He could easily imagine what was going through her head. _The Weyrleader doesn't know everything after all_ , most likely. “Two threads with one flame, eh?”

“I wouldn't have risked Alaireth for less.”

“You shouldn't have risked her at all, especially with your weyrmate dying the way he did.”

“She agreed to try. You've no idea how close we came to succeeding.”

He only had her word for it, but it seemed that she truly believed what she was saying. On any other day, he'd have mocked her for being delusional...but her queen _had_ brought F'ren's bronze back with her. Sh'vek settled back in his chair and stretched out his legs, giving the woman some space. _What do you make of that, Ormaith? She says they tried to stop their weyrmates dying, during those months they spent living twice. They didn't, obviously... but Alaireth did_ something _yesterday. If they'd succeeded with M'ton and Narnoth too...do you see what that would mean?_

_But they didn't. Sh'vek, it was all too long ago._

It was, but time was nothing to a dragonrider. If you could change events an hour in the past, why _not_ the events of twenty turns previous? He _had_ to know how she'd done it! “What pushed you to break your Weyrlingmaster's training?”

“Other than you? A message, in my own hand. Before I left, I already knew I'd succeeded in going back, and by how long. Far enough back for Alaireth to untangle the last hours of Narnoth's life, to give me time to study the problem properly. I knew we couldn't risk doing anything paradoxical, so we lived out those months before trying to call him back. It seemed safer than leaping blindly ahead, and by then I was convinced that the other benefits were well worth it.” She wiped at her eyes with the heel of her hand. “Shard it, I should have paid more attention to Malia's warnings. I thought I had it all figured out. I knew it would be hard, but it should've been possible if we loved them enough. We were going to bring them back, make everything right again.”

“What went wrong?”

“Enough.” She balled up a fist, then splayed her fingers open on the table, staring blankly ahead. “Just a small mistake, but it was enough to ruin everything. You don't get any second chances. They died over Ista, and Alaireth and I were _there_ that day, too close in time to the _when_ we were calling them from, and too close in place to the _where_ of their last moments. We went to Ista and tried again there, as soon as I knew it was a problem...but all it achieved was to confuse things even more. Even if I _had_ got that part right, I'm not sure if we'd have succeeded. After two whole months, by then they'd gone too far into their deaths.” Rahnis was struggling to control her tears now. “Knowing what I know now, I think we'd still have failed. Or maybe I just want to believe that, so it isn't my fault any more. We reached them, felt them... but it wasn't enough, and we couldn't pull them back the way we did Sasseny and Velsilth.”

Sh'vek almost choked on his klah. “Them, too?” When would it have been? Sasseny and Velsilth were a green pair new to the fighting Wings. R'fint had reported that they'd had some kind of mishap with a visual during threadfall, back in their last couple of months of Weyrling training, hadn't he? _Ormaith! Wake Alaireth up now and get that confirmed!_ “Faranth, woman! You're saying they _did_ leap blind, aren't you?” But if that was so...then if two months was too long to wait, twenty turns would be impossible. The sudden souring of his new-found hopes made Trath's survival all the more repugnant, but he was determined to get his answers now, no matter how unpleasant they might be. “Assuming there aren't any others I should know about first, I think it's time you told me how Alaireth brought Trath back.”

“You can't change it now, Sh'vek, if that's why you're asking. Done is done.” She tilted her head to one side and gave him a quick frown. “And Ormaith won't hear anything different from Alaireth. She felt Trath's distress while she was _between_ times. Lost as he was, he was still trying to return to the Weyr, and there was just enough of a connection that she was able to pull him back with her, from the moment that Kiath's death became an absolute to the one in which they both arrived back at the Weyr.” She lowered her head, and stared down at her hands. “We could have done the same thing with Narnoth and M'ton, too, if I'd only known it at the time. Gone back, then jumped forwards. It's too late for that, now.”

Ormaith's presence in his mind confirmed the weyrwoman's words; the bronze had just had very much the same explanation from a rather disgruntled Alaireth. _And she's not happy that you're upsetting her rider,_ Ormaith added.

 _What does she want me to do, comfort her? Can't see_ that _being well received._ Sh'vek let out a long sigh and shook his head, trying to order his thoughts around far too many revelations at once. _Gone back, then jumped forwards? Does Alaireth agree then, that that's the only way it might be done?_

 _She thinks she could manage some minutes, perhaps as much as an hour, without needing to go_ between _times, providing the time and place of departure is known to her. Beyond that, yes, the way her rider described is the only way she thinks it might be possible._

_Faranth! Twenty sharding turns of grief, and his own damn dragon is the one that provides the answer? Faranth!_

He could sense Ormaith considering the same idea. _I do not think I could do it on my own. I think we need the help of a queen. Their help. But I do not think Rahnis will wish to do so, and if she does not, then nor will Alaireth._

Sh'vek didn't think so either. The irony of the situation was almost laughable. How hard a bargain would she drive, if she knew? For A'minek's life, he'd pay any price she named.

 _All the more reason not to rush into anything,_ Ormaith reminded him. _That was the mistake she made, remember?_

 _You're right,_ Sh'vek decided. _We carry on as planned for now. I'll broach the subject with her once our position is secure. That and tomorrow's fall are more than enough to worry about for now._

He rose from his chair and went to crouch beside her. “Done is done, Weyrwoman, as you said,” he said, setting his hand gently on her shoulder. She endured the touch uneasily. “I appreciate your honesty. Get back to your duties as soon as you feel ready, and don't keep Damrel busy _too_ late into the evening. I'll want a full report from you, among other things.” That should keep her nerves on edge well enough. “Your weyr would be better than here, for that. You might try thinking of the changes ahead as a fresh start for yourself, as well as for the Weyr. Who knows what the dawn shall bring?”

She closed her eyes and turned her face away from him. “Nothing good.”


	36. Chapter 36

_Eena meena up and down_   
_Eena meena all around_   
_Eena meena flies ahead_   
_Count to ten within your head_

_Eena meena up and down_   
_Eena meena count the beats_   
_In the Wings the bronzes lead_   
_the smaller dragons set the pace_

**  
Early afternoon, 14.3.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

 

The morning had dawned cold enough to frost the ground. F'ren hadn't woken until almost noon, but even after several hours of warm spring sun the Weyr still wore a glistening coat of rime. High above the Weyr, the air was still well below freezing, and it felt colder still at the speeds a dragon flew. F'ren hunched his shoulders and dipped his chin beneath the collar of his flying jacket as Trath turned into the wind, concentrating on the steady rhythm of the dragon's wingbeats. Even and strong they came, one after another in perfect time with his count, while the landscape rolled fluidly away beneath them. They'd not been out long, nor had they travelled far: the flight pattern F'ren had chosen wouldn't have taxed a nine-month weyrling – he'd modified a standard weyrling drill, in fact – but he hadn't wanted to push things too hard at first. Not that he could have done even if he'd wanted to, not with orders to stay within sight of the Weyr's watchdragon at all times. _Between_ had also been forbidden them. F'ren wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. There was a hesitancy to Trath's mind whenever the dragon thought about it, an instinctive reluctance to go where Kiath's death had taken him. F'ren hoped it would fade alongside the rest of the memories, but they'd have to put _between_ to the test again well before then.

On the ground, Trath's shadow crossed the dark line of the tithe-road. _That's our last marker,_ F'ren noted _. We're a dozen beats over our norm, but I think it's good enough. You're still feeling good?_

Trath opened his jaws and yawned. _I feel like I flew the breadth of the continent yesterday._

_Well, that's definitely an improvement on 'all the way to the Red Star and back'. You don't seem as stiff._

_No, I'm not. It's half turns next, isn't it? What would you say to something a little more interesting?_

_Only if you think you're up to it._

Trath snorted. _Thread won't be fought with simple half turns._

_No, but we can work up from there. I'm not convinced we should fight at all, tomorrow._

_I assume you still want me to catch Alaireth? I don't think half-turns will be enough to win a queen._

_You won't do either if you're stuck on the ground up to your trailing edge in numbweed,_ F'ren rebuked, but Trath seemed sincere enough, and driven by more than mere boredom _._ As short as their flight had been, it had limbered him up well, and the solitary freedom of the empty skies had done even better for both their states of mind. _What did you have in mind?_

Trath sent his intentions in a brief burst of imagery. The flashy dive, close to one of the spindles, was an easy way to embarrass yourself if you got it wrong, but it ought to have been well within the dragon's capabilities. Trath was testing himself, F'ren realised as they ascended, without the slightest intention of trying to impress any one of the dragons currently sunning themselves on the rim.

At twice the height of the Weyr's tallest spindle, Trath levelled out. _I'll take the updraught off the rim as soon as I can feel it._

Knowing that that was all the warning he was going to get, F'ren leant forwards and tucked himself tight against Trath's neck. His innards rose as the bronze dropped, the Weyr's peaks seeming to hurtle forwards towards them, then everything became lost in the blur of freezing, rushing air. _Keep it steady. I know we've done this a thousand times before, but..._

_I know, F'ren. I know what I'm doing. Trust me._

_I do._ Keeping his head close to the dragon's neck F'ren carefully peered back to check the shape of Trath's offside trailing edge: it was perfectly trimmed, batten-ribs maintaining the dragon's controlled flight even with wings at half-spread. Ahead of them, the southernmost spindle was drawing closer at an ever increasing rate; more than one weyrling had come to grief on its slopes in living memory, but never yet a dragon of Trath's age and experience.

 _There's a first time for everything!_ The dragon followed the thought with a flick of his fingerbones that sent him veering into a turn, aiming his flight precisely between the tips of the nearest spindles.

 _That's meant to inspire trust, is it?_ It did, actually. It was just as good a test of accuracy in flight as a close pass down the spindle's ridgeline, but far less hazardous should anything go awry. Trath was obviously well aware of his limitations. On the other hand, the fact that he felt confident enough to joke was far better proof of his recovery than any number of successful aerial stunts. F'ren chuckled as Trath let his mental focus slip open, wide enough for the dragon's good humour to filter back to him. _Faranth, I'd forgotten how much fun flying could be. Let's take the thermal off the south flank and see where it tops out, shall we?_

 _Did you know Ruarnoth was here?_ Trath said as they overflew the bowl. _She said H'koll was asking after you, until the queens told her not to speak to me anymore._

F'ren peered down in the rough direction of the greenrider's ledge. _H'koll? Isn't he with the weyrlings, wherever it is that they are today?_

_H'koll is in the infirmary today. Ruarnoth waits for him there. I don't know where the weyrlings are._

_Never mind the weyrlings! What's up with H'koll? Nothing serious, I hope?_

_I don't know. I'm sorry._

_Don't be; it's not your fault. I'll ask around, and maybe the healers will let me pay a visit._ _I'll want Pakall to look you over anyway._ F'ren leant out the other way, checking the sun-lit ledges of the lower infirmary weyrs. Just enough were occupied to keep the dragonhealers busy, but not so many that they wouldn't welcome any more patients. _Does it bother you, Trath? Not talking to the others?_

 _Not yet,_ the dragon replied. _Today, I think I am glad we are left to ourselves. I listen to you, listening to me. We hear each other. Why would either of us need more than that?_

F'ren closed his eyes. Trath was right. The close, continual contact of their minds was tiring in a way he'd never noticed before, but he wouldn't willingly let it slacken, not even by the smallest fraction. He might start remembering again if he did. Right now, he felt as close to Trath as he'd ever done before, unified in togetherness almost as deeply as during a mating flight, but still as separate individuals, conscious equals, aware and appreciative of one another. He could still feel where they didn't quite fit properly together any more, deep, painful places where he and Kiath had wounded them, but at least they were learning the shape of each other's minds again. It felt good. It felt _right._

They topped the southern lip of the Weyr and followed the slope of the mountain downwards. Trath opened his wings in good time to slow his descent, channelling speed and strength into an arcing rise that pressed F'ren hard against the neck ridge behind him. He could sense the dragon's discomfort as he eased into the strain of the manoeuvre, but the pains were less than they had been and showed no sign of lingering. Provided Trath didn't stress himself too greatly, or overfly himself before he'd recovered, time and rest would heal him perfectly. A sevenday would be more than sufficient.

 _Do we have a sevenday?_ Trath asked wryly.

Did they have a sevenday? _Of course we don't. We've got five hours of threadfall tomorrow, and a queen to catch the day after that._ F'ren could sense that Trath was tiring fast now, but the exuberance of the dragon's flight was as infectious as ever. He laughed with delight, determined to enjoy it as much as he could. _Think you can do it?_

He couldn't, of course, and both of them knew it. Attempting either one would mean pushing Trath dangerously close to overflying himself.

Trath rumbled, beat his wings hard twice more, then relaxed into the lift of the thermal. _Well, I definitely won't if I_ think _I can't._

_True, true. In that case, we'll have to rely on our reputation for achieving the impossible. That, and excuse ourselves from Fall._

_We can't do that!_

_We'll see. As for Alaireth, well, maybe we'll get lucky and everyone else will oversleep._ F'ren closed his eyes again, and let his mind drift. Sooner than he expected, the small, controlling motions of Trath's wings intensified, signalling that the dragon had run out of air to work with. He leaned out over Trath's neck and checked on their altitude; there ought still be a little more lift to work with, if Trath could find the best angles and the right patch of air, but he could feel the dragon beginning to struggle in the thin air. Shard it, they weren't _that_ much higher than the usual upper flight altitude. _I want us back up here again this evening, once you've rested. Should be a pretty sunset from up here._

His own head was growing slightly fuzzy, he realised. Time to call it a day. _Come on. Let's head back to the Weyr._

 

 

 

 

They were almost back to their weyr when Trath passed on the news that F'ren had been summoned to the Council Chamber. The simple pleasures of flying vanished faster than a threaded plant as the bronze diverted to the bowl, and F'ren started feeling the air's chill once again. Sh'vek had appeared in his weyr at one point during the previous evening for a brief, rather one-sided exchange of unpleasantries, but his memory of what had actually been said didn't go much beyond the knowledge that he and Trath had been confined to the Weyr. _Ormaith, was it? Did he say why? Anyone else been called in?_

_Yes. No. He didn't say._

_What about Rahnis? Alaireth still hasn't said anything to you?_

_Nothing more than reiterating the order that I'm not to go_ between. _That was when we left our weyr._ _She made it very clear that I wasn't to bespeak her uninvited_. _I'd rather you didn't ask me to._

 _Shard it. Shard it!_ F'ren unbuckled Trath's straps and dropped to the ground, pulling the loose ends along with him. _You may as well get something more to eat, swim as well if there's time. No idea how long this will take._ He gathered the dragon's straps into loops and slung them over an outcrop of rock, then climbed the steps leading up to the Weyrleaders' quarters. He could already hear the indistinct sound of several different conversations. The noise echoed oddly in the emptiness of Kiath's weyr. He walked down the short corridor that led to the Council Chamber; the closed door swung open just as he raised his hand to knock. Ormaith hadn't been on his ledge outside, but _someone_ had given warning that he was on his way in. F'ren took an awkward step forward, feeling slightly foolish, but also very relieved by what he could see inside the room. Empty chairs bordered the large table in a haphazard mess, while their occupants busied themselves at the wall-slate, arguing the merits of whatever formations were chalked onto it. He'd walked in on a Wing meeting, then; not a perfunctory trial.

 _Planning for tomorrow's fall,_ he told Trath as C'nir waved him inside. _They brought me in late, but they're not done with it yet, so I doubt I'll be in here longer than it takes to demote me. Don't think everyone's happy with their sectors, either._

F'ren eyed the assembled men speculatively, wondering which of them was now Snowfall's Wingleader. It wasn't long before he found part of the answer amongst the crowd; brownrider G'treb had his back to him, but although his curly orange hair was neither as bright nor as profuse as it had been five turns back, it was still the only head like it amongst the Weyr's riders. _G'treb and Dondrith are Snowfall's new wingseconds, from the look of it. I can't see M'arsen anywhere. Wonder where he's got to?_

The door's latch clicked noisily into place behind him and a few heads at the back of the group turned to see who had arrived. “Well, look who's here,” G'dil said, smiling broadly.

“I believe I'm expected,” F'ren said. G'dil was clearly anticipating his inevitable demotion with great delight, but no-one else looked quite so happy to see him. H'rack was scowling – which probably argued for P'lindis as Snowfall's new Wingleader – S'kloss and L'sen looked pitying, and a furious M'gan was being held back by both of his seconds. Trying to ignore M'gan, he walked right through the group all the way to the wall-slate, amused by how easily the other men gave way for him. _They must think me contagious, Trath._

He placed his hands on his hips, and gave the chalked markings a proper look. “No wonder everyone looks so miserable. Looks like Snowfall's not the only Wing flying as threadbait tomorrow. ”

“You wouldn't have had half the trouble you did with my Wing if you'd stuck to the formations your betters assigned you to,” P'lindis said, scowling at him.

That answered one of F'ren's questions, but P'lindis was even more of a sycophantic fool than F'ren had thought him if he actually believed that! “Really?” Judging by the notes chalked above the formation diagrams, the Weyr would be flying densely-packed against a compressed fall of Thread, facing unpredictable crosswinds as well as the updraughts of the Western Mountains. It looked like Sh'vek was expecting the worst from the conditions...but his plans for dealing with it were doomed to fail, at least as far as the upper flight went. They'd face the full force of the fall, too tightly packed to easily break formation, especially with other dragons of their Wing flying and flaming so close beneath them. Add to that the dozens of punishing, rapid turns required by such a compact, fast-paced formation... it was struggle enough imagining P'lindis successfully coordinating his Wing through such manoeuvres under the best of conditions, let alone a Wing enlarged to full strength during a fall like tomorrow's would be.

Faranth, he could predict half a dozen likely points of failure right away. He tapped Snowfall's marker with his knuckles. “You like the look of this formation, do you?”

“It's a sharding fall, F'ren,” P'lindis said. “It's not meant to be pretty.”

Beside P'lindis, H'rack took a sudden interest in his fingernails. F'ren couldn't really blame him for not speaking out, but surely one of the other Wingleaders ought to have said _something_ about half the Weyr being endangered so callously? “Shard it, are you _all_ blind?”

Sh'vek arched an eyebrow. “ _You_ are no longer in any position to criticise.”

“What are you going to do, Sh'vek? Demote me?” F'ren could feel Trath tugging at his mind, urging him to caution, but he was too angry to be silenced by anyone, even his own dragon. “No, I've never been better placed to speak my mind. And if you're mad enough to send the Wings out to fight like that I'd be derelict in my duty not to. Faranth! Tightly layered rows, upper flight to target the densest regions of the Fall...oh, they'll cut a swathe in it, I'm sure, but more from the breadth of well-scored wings than the heat of their flame. Calling it _sharding threadbait_ is me being generous. If the upper flight lasts longer than a single shift before the first Wing cracks, Trath's a green wher. Not that I have any intention of being there to see it.”

The brief silence that met his words was broken by Sh'vek's laughter. “F'ren, are you _trying_ to bait me? You harp on about duty one moment, only to declare your intention to abscond from fall in the very next? I can't say I ever expected to hear such rank _cowardice_ from your lips. Unless conditions improve, High Reaches Weyr will fly at full strength against tomorrow's fall. I expect to see every dragon capable of flight in the air, _including_ yours.”

“You're not grounding me then?”

“Not yet, no.”

“I can't imagine why not,” F'ren muttered. He hoped that some of the others might start wondering about that, too. Then again, the confines of his own weyr were a considerably safer place than the upper flight during a bad fall.

“But seeing as you're so desperate to help out with the preparations,” Sh'vek continued, “you can report to the firestone bunker immediately after the next change of watch. M'arsen will know to expect you. Sit back down everyone.” He gestured at the other men, waving them back towards the table, before swinging his hand back to level a finger in F'ren's direction. “Except you. Let's get this over and done with.”

For once, F'ren agreed with the Weyrleader; there was no sense in prolonging this particular spectacle. He started working on the cords looped around his left shoulder, wishing he'd thought to remove them earlier.

“I see you understand why you were summoned?” Sh'vek drawled. He pulled out his chair and sat down. “Get on with it, then.”

Irritated by how long the knots were taking to come loose, F'ren's composure broke. “Oh, absolutely, Weyrleader.” He picked at the cords furiously with his fingernails. “Demotions for incompetence were on the _last_ meeting's agenda.” _That_ wiped the smile off G'dil's face! “Today...well.”

 _Slowly,_ Trath said. The dragon was a comforting, constant presence at the back of F'ren's mind. _You'll never get it loose if you pull the wrong ends._

F'ren fought down his impatience with a sigh. _I know._ In truth, this wasn't half as humiliating as his last demotion from Wingleader had been, and if luck and Alaireth were on his side he'd be needing a different set soon enough anyway. Finally working the cords loose enough to slip them free, F'ren stepped forward and tossed them onto the table just out of Sh'vek's reach.

Ignoring them, the Weyrleader motioned for him to move back towards the door. It wasn't _quite_ a dismissal; sure enough, as soon as F'ren had rounded the table Sh'vek leaned forwards in his chair and spoke again.

“Bronzerider F'ren. Yesterday, the Weyr at large was told that we believed that you and Maenida were both victims of Kiath's demise.” His voice was level, his expression impassive. “The circumstances of the tragedy were, initially, very confused. That situation has now changed. You stand accused of murdering Weyrwoman Maenida and, through her, Maenida's queen, Kiath. And, although your guilt cannot be presumed before your trial concludes, it would be grossly inappropriate to permit you to continue as Snowfall's Wingleader. You are hereby stripped of all rank and privileges.”

F'ren forced himself to nod, glad of Trath's silent mental support.

“Formal charges will be entered into the Weyr's records later today.” Sh'vek tapped the tabletop thoughtfully with his fingers. “Do you wish to register any protest?”

Against a murder charge that should never have been made at all? What would be the point? It wasn't going to be a trial that saw him absolved or condemned, it would be the will of the man sitting in Sh'vek's chair a sevenday from now. “No.”

“Good.” Sh'vek selected one of the hides on the table in front of him, and added a short note to the bottom. “Your trial will be prosecuted under the auspices of your Weyrleaders as soon as M'arsen has finished assembling the case against you.”

F'ren drew in a quick breath, alerted by an almost imperceptible shift in Sh'vek's tone. The trial itself didn't matter one bit. The trial was a foregone conclusion. What mattered...what mattered was the satisfaction in the man's voice when he'd spoken of _Weyrleaders_ in plural. And M'arsen would need days at most. _Tell me I'm wrong, Trath._

_What about?_

_I think he knows. Ask her, Trath! Ask Alaireth if there's a chance he might suspect._ “I'm entitled to an advocate of my choosing,” F'ren said, realising that that might offer another means of answering his question. “I believe one of the Wingleaders or a Junior Weyrwoman is traditional.”

Finally, Sh'vek smiled. “Should you choose to contest the charge, then yes, it is.” He made a point of looking around the room, eyes lingering on each of the Wingleaders in turn. M'gan's jaw was clenched so hard he was like to give himself a headache. “Assuming anyone will agree to do it.”

Well, he wasn't planning on asking any of _them!_ “I thought I'd ask weyrwoman Rahnis,” F'ren said. _What does Alaireth say, Trath?_

_I'm sorry, F'ren. She still refuses to hear me._

Sh'vek bent his head and added another note to his hide. “Very well. No need to bother her about it now. I'll see to it that the junior weyrwoman is present to argue your case.”

The _junior weyrwoman,_ not _weyrwoman Rahnis._ F'ren felt his blood run cold. _Shard it, Trath! Tell her I need to know!_

There was a short pause, then the dragon spoke again. _Ormaith says that this is his Weyr and what he and his rider_ don't _know about what happens here isn't_ worth _knowing. He also says, if you want specifics, you should ask the Weyrleader outright._

 _Shard it, he_ does _know!_ Shard _it!_ F'ren blinked and refocused his vision on his surroundings. Sh'vek was staring at him, his eyes narrow.

“I know Rahnis will be _most_ obliging. Did you have anything more to say? Or a question, perhaps?”

 _Now_ he named her! F'ren smiled sickly and shook his head. “No, Weyrleader. Not at present.”

“Good. To prevent any prejudice of your trial, you are confined to your weyr excepting only the essential tasks of your dragon's care, wing drills, threadfall, and any other punishments you accrue. You're dismissed, bronzerider.” He nodded to C'nir, who rose from his chair.

F'ren could take a hint. “Weyrleader. Wingleaders.” Omitting the customary salute, he turned for the door.

 

 

 

 

F'ren was still fuming when he reached the bowl. It was bad enough that Sh'vek had somehow learned that Delene wouldn't be the Weyr's next Weyrwoman – he needed to warn Rahnis about that, if he could find her – but, in spite of that, it was the more immediate prospect of the following day's threadfall that he couldn't shake from his thoughts.

 _You really don't think we should fight thread tomorrow, do you?_ Trath asked.

 _No. I know you disagree, but I don't see we've any other choice. We've_ got _to maximise your chance of flying Alaireth._

_And I have to fight Thread, F'ren. I can't pretend it isn't falling._

_It's always falling somewhere. We don't fight it over Benden, do we? Or down in the deserted South?_ It was a weak argument; one that wouldn't convince a weyrling green. If the rest of the Weyr was fighting, no dragon would find it easy to resist the instinct to join them. F'ren decided to temporarily give up on the issue. _I know. I know you don't like it. We'll talk it over later. Has P'lindis told the Wing when they'll be drilling yet? Or what?_

_I've heard nothing from Kanleth, nor from Simpeth either. Not that it matters; I've eaten well and I expect I shall sleep most of the afternoon. You should eat, too. You weren't ordered to starve yourself._

_Probably just an oversight._ He was feeling quite hungry, he realised, not that he had much of an appetite for eating, but he'd need the food if he'd be spending the latter part of the afternoon breaking firestone.

_You could've avoided that. It'll make you tired. That's not good._

_No, Trath, that it isn't._

Inside, the main cavern was as busy as ever. But, busy or not, half the people there seemed to think it necessary to stop whatever they were doing so they could give him a sharding good stare. F'ren looked blankly ahead as he made for leftovers hanging in a pot over the night hearth. For all that he hadn't _yet_ been publicly blamed for Maenida's death, it looked like doubts and rumour had had much the same effect. He helped himself to some stew, and started eating it where he stood. No-one approached him, but a good handful didn't stop staring at him, either. He was staring pointedly back at one group, determined to outlast them, when he caught sight of Rahnis, M'arsen and an unfamiliar man sitting down at one of the better lit tables.

Shard Sh'vek's orders! What was one more rule broken, now? Alaireth might not be willing to hear Trath at present, but no-one could stop him talking to her rider. Leaving his bowl on the edge of the nearest table, F'ren started towards them.

Rahnis broke off her conversation as he approached and gave him a slight shake of her head. “I'm busy, F'ren, and I can't talk to you now.”

Lower Caverns business would have to wait; this was far too important. “You need to.”

“This isn't a good time.”

Reaching her table, F'ren leaned on the back of one of the empty chairs. “He knows, Rahnis. _Make_ time.” The stranger looked nonplussed by his statement, but F'ren could see that Rahnis knew who he'd meant.

The weyrwoman's lips tightened, and she pushed herself up from her chair. “Damrel, I think we'd be better off discussing this in the Headwoman's office.”

M'arsen followed her lead. “Good idea, weyrwoman. Do you want me to deal with this?”

M'arsen's coat hung loosely from his right shoulder, and his arm was bound up in a sling. _He_ wouldn't need to worry about fighting Thread tomorrow, but it would even things up rather nicely between them, F'ren decided. “Piss off, M'arsen, or I'll break the other one.”

“Try it, F'ren.”

“That won't be necessary, M'arsen,” Rahnis said. “F'ren. I really can't talk to you. Find someone else. Better yet, _go to your weyr and stay there!_ ”

 _Alaireth says I must tell you to listen to Rahnis,_ Trath said.

 _Oh, so_ now _she's talking to you? Did she say why?_

_Only that you must not speak to her, now or later, and should do as she asks. She says we should go to our weyr for now, and later you should follow your own advice._

_That doesn't make sense! How can I talk to her later when she won't talk to me? Not good enough, Trath. Not nearly good enough._

_F'ren. Look at the riders around you. If you do not leave, Alaireth says she_ will _see that they make you go._

 _What?_ F'ren checked the tables to either side of him. The group working on new straps had set aside their tools, and the poker-players on the next nearest table had all abandoned their current hand. S'nell was on his feet already.

_Trust her, F'ren. Do as Rahnis asks._

“Problem with your ears, rider?” M'arsen said, rounding the table. “She doesn't want to talk to you.”

F'ren had been ready to walk away until M'arsen had said that. “Rahnis, you-”

“Faranth, does _no-one_ listen?” Rahnis snapped. “F'ren? Go away, _please._ You fardling shouldn't need me to tell you _not to fight,_ especially when you're in no condition for it. M'arsen, you're Sh'vek's wher, not mine, but I'm well aware of what his orders were for you today. Your next reminder won't come from me. Damrel, my apologies. The headwoman's office is this way.” She turned her back and briskly walked away. The stranger – Damrel, presumably – followed in her wake. M'arsen lingered long enough to give him a good sneer before doing the same.

“What was that all about anyway?” S'nell asked. “I'd a good hand before you interrupted!”

“My mistake,” F'ren muttered. He was sure he could feel everyone's eyes on him again as he retreated back towards the night hearth. He found his bowl where he'd left it, and poked at the congealing mess with his spoon. _You know what? I don't think I'm hungry after all._

 _Eat it,_ Trath insisted. _And stop looking at them, if they bother you that much._

F'ren acquiesced to both requests with a sigh. _I suppose I should find myself some new cords, after this. Not that it really seems worth it. Why didn't she talk to me, Trath? If things go badly with Alaireth...well, if thread doesn't get us, a transfer is the best we can hope for after my trial. That'll be something to look forward to, won't it?_

_Perhaps she means to speak to you later? When the brown's rider has left her tail._

_You mean when he's singeing mine instead? Not that we've anything better to do than waiting around on our backsides right now._ He finished his bowl and tossed it onto the small stack of empties on the shelf beside the hearth. With the weyrlings still absent from the Weyr the main barracks were bound to be locked, so he'd need to raid the Lower Caverns' supply. F'ren took the back tunnel that led the long way round to the cloth rooms and main storage, via the sleeping rooms and nursery. This part of the Weyr was usually deserted during waking hours, and he saw no-one until he reached the passage that led off to the nursery rooms. A pair of women were pacing the halls ahead of him in a vain attempt to soothe the crying babes strapped to their chests. They, at least, had far better things to do than stare at _him._

He had just rounded the next corner when Trath sent him a quiet, tightly focused thought. _Stay where you are._ _Corhoth's rider wishes to speak to you._

 _Ah._ The Wing meeting must have finished earlier than usual. _Someone else come to harangue me._ F'ren leaned back against the wall and waited. A minute or so later D'barn appeared, coming down the tunnel from the opposite direction. F'ren eyed him cautiously; he didn't think the man would hold back a second time. “What do you want, D'barn?”

“What do you think I want?” D'barn checked the corridor both ways, then set his back against the opposite wall. “I want to keep my son alive,” he said quietly. “You were supposed to be helping me with that F'ren, not making things worse.”

Shard it, he wasn't going to stand here and let the man scold him like an old aunty! “ _Worse_?”

“Yes, _worse_.” D'barn repeated. “I don't like what's planned for tomorrow any more than you do, but at least I had the sense not to _tell_ Sh'vek that to his face. That's never been the best way of dealing with him.”

Too exasperated to bother hiding it, F'ren rolled his eyes. “No? Is that what you were all doing then, _dealing_ with him? Looked more like boot-licking to me.”

D'barn didn't rise to the insult. “We were discussing fall-back formations before _you_ showed your face,” he said. “Can't see any of them happening now.”

He probably had a valid point there...but it shouldn't have stopped either him or any of the others from insisting on a fall-back before the meeting wound down. “And it's _my_ fault that the rest of you follow his directions like a string of mindless trundlebugs, is it? You're the ones in a position to do something about it, not me.”

D'barn shook his head. “Not where it matters. Not in Snowfall.”

_Shells, Trath, what is it with people's priorities in this Weyr? I'm the last person anyone should be asking favours of right now._

_Corhoth's rider trusts you._

_Faranth knows why!_

_So do I._

_That wasn't what I meant. I'm not his Wingleader any more, nor Sk'barn's, either._ “I am _not_ responsible for Snowfall any more,” F'ren said, reminding D'barn and Trath alike of that fact. “In case you hadn't noticed, that's P'lindis' job now.”

Up on his ledge, Trath snorted in disdain. _If you're not responsible for them, why are you feeling so guilty right now?_

F'ren refused to answer that question. Instead, he peered back down the corridor, wishing that someone might appear and scare D'barn off. No-one did. He crossed his arms and glared at the man, _willing_ him to go away. That didn't work, either. _“_ Your boy's a dragonrider, man! He and Sacquith can look out for each other, just the same as everyone else does.”

“It's _not_ the same, and you fardling well know it. Not for the Snowfall riders.” D'barn extended a hand pleadingly. “I know you and Trath aren't in a good way right now...”

F'ren gave a shallow laugh; now _that_ was an understatement.

“...but you'll still be up there, tomorrow.”

 _We will, will we?_ F'ren turned on the spot and started walking away. “Don't count on it.”

“If you do nothing else, at least you can keep an eye on him for me,” D'barn called out at F'ren's back. His boots sounded loudly on the stone floor as he hurried to catch up.

F'ren grimaced, and kept walking.

 _Corhoth says his rider will follow you all the way back to our weyr if he has_ to, Trath said. _I've told him that that won't be necessary._

_You did, did you? Shard it, Trath, this isn't what I need right now._

F'ren stopped in his tracks and rounded on the other bronzerider. “D'barn, have you _seen_ Trath today? I can't afford to watch out for any dragon other than my own right now. Sh'vek taking the Wing off my hands was probably the best decision he's ever made...but even if I _was_ still a Wingleader, he wouldn't miss as good an opportunity as this to _order_ me to stick with the prescribed formation. There is _nothing_ I can say or do that will help you, or me, or Sk'barn, or any of the others a single sharding bit. So if you're that concerned about tomorrow, go find your son and make the most of today. And then get on your knees and beg Sh'vek to move him to Flamestrike!”

This time, D'barn made no attempt follow him. F'ren managed a dozen steps, each one of them seeming harder than the last, before the weight of Trath's silent disapproval became too much.

 _Oh, you're listening to me now, are you?_ Trath said as he slowed to a stop.

F'ren squeezed his eyelids shut. _Yes._

_Then tell me why we can't do as the man asks._

_Faranth, Trath, we've got_ one _opportunity to change things around here for the better. I heard what you were thinking, earlier. How we should fight thread as well as we can because it's our duty to do it, it's what we were both born to do, and all of that. And I know you're right and I'm not even going to try to persuade you otherwise. But we_ can't _fly tomorrow. Not if we want to match Ormaith when Alaireth rises. We've got to make the most of the small chance we have. If that means leaving Thread to the rest of the Weyr, I'd say it's worth it._ Trath wouldn't like staying behind, but he'd far rather bear his dragon's shame than see Sh'vek as Weyrleader a single day longer.

_Would you? Really?_

The dragon's question speared him with guilt right through the heart. _I'm sorry._

_You shouldn't need to be, F'ren. I can tell when you're lying to yourself, even if you can't. Not fighting thread won't win me my queen, and you know that just as well as I do._

_It'll help._

_It won't._ _You_ know _it won't. You don't want us to fight tomorrow because you're afraid and ashamed. Because dragons of our Wing will likely die, and there's nothing we can do to prevent it. Because we_ are _responsible for them, even now._

_Tell that to Sh'vek! If we're not there, he might still be persuaded to move them to the lower flight. They deserved better than being in my Wing, every single one of them._

_Stop feeling so sorry for yourself! Do you allow his choices to define_ your _values? Your loyalties? Were you their Wingleader or not? Does that duty start and finish with the knots on your shoulder?_

_OF COURSE IT SHARDING DOESN'T!_

This time, Trath's silence was one of comfort, without expectation. F'ren could sense an apology of sorts wound up within it, along with the knowledge that his dragon would defer to his decision, whatever it might be. It wasn't simply a choice between fighting thread or not...and the more F'ren thought about it, the more he realised that he already knew what he wanted to do about it. After all he'd said to Sh'vek back in the council room, how could he _not_ take action? That would be the most cowardly choice of all.

Not that he could manage everything he needed on his own. “D'barn?” he asked, turning back to see if the man was still there.

“Corhoth advised me to wait you out.” D'barn walked over to join him, smiling sympathetically. He clapped a hand on F'ren's shoulder. “Never get into an argument with your dragon. Even if you win, you lose.”

“He knows me better than I know myself, most of the time.” F'ren looked D'barn gravely in the eyes. “I'm going to do everything I possibly can tomorrow, but that doesn't guarantee that any given one of us will come back alive. And, I'm going to need your help. I've forty-three other dragons to worry about tomorrow, as well as Sacquith and Trath.”

D'barn frowned, clearly perplexed by the short count. “Forty-five, excluding Lirroth, isn't it?”

“P'lindis and G'treb won't be flying tomorrow,” F'ren explained. Giving Second's-knots to a brownrider like G'treb was a decent idea in principle, but he wouldn't have been F'ren's choice for the job. The man was rigid and domineering, a good choice for a Wing with a weak leader and the potential for discipline problems – a perfect match for P'lindis, in fact – but he certainly wouldn't be open to what F'ren planned on doing. “I don't care how it happens, D'barn, just see that it does. And don't involve H'rack in it unless you have to.”

“Is that _all?_ ”

“No. Tell H'rack he should take a look inside the weyrling barracks when the watch changes.” H'koll would have a key, hopefully, and if not there was always that drudge in the laundry. “He might pick up some interesting ideas.”

“You're taking the Wing back, aren't you?”

F'ren smiled. “Oh, is that what it looks like?” He gave D'barn a respectful salute, and turned back down the corridor. He had a lot of work to do now, and not much time.


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nonny, you know who you are. Thanks for the positive comments - and there'll be a bonus update this week.
> 
> Chapter tag notes - nothing new, but 'bad decisions' arguably applies again. 
> 
> Oh, and look! Another piece of blatant propaganda from the Harper Hall to kick things off... ;-)

_Apprentice to Master and Holder to Lord_   
_Defer to their wisdom and to them accord_   
_the trust and respect that is rightfully theirs_   
_that their peers did bestow on the worthiest heirs_

_Apprentice to Master and Holder to Lord_   
_Do not let ill use and misrule be ignored_   
_Craftmasters and Conclave must act for your sake,_   
_and lest evil follow, autonomy break._

 

**Early evening, 14.3.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

  
The Weyr's feeding grounds were crowded. A full dozen of the larger browns and bronzes stooped beside their kills, while a handful more were circling above the scattered, panicked herdbeasts, waiting for their own chance to strike.

Alaireth ignored them all.

Rahnis slowed to watch as the queen passed overhead. Ahead of her, M'arsen kept walking for another half a dragonlength before he realised that she wasn't keeping pace with him and turned back, clearly irritated by the delay. Damrel, on the other hand, looked a little relieved. The ground of the herdbeast and wherry enclosures was far from level, rising steadily towards the walls of the bowl, and offered anyone outside the high stone walls a clear view of most of what took place within. Some dragons were messier eaters than others but, no matter how tidy a kill was, the unfortunate prey rarely died quietly, nor were the surviving beasts easily calmed. Rahnis herself had taken a good few months after Impressing Alaireth to become fully accustomed to the sight of a dragon casually dismembering its meal, but it had been twice as long again before the sound of teeth crushing skulls ceased to bother her. Over in the wherry enclosure, the sights and sounds were a little less gruesome, but the smells were far, far worse. The feeding grounds weren't a part of the Weyr that many visitors willingly went too close to, but she'd promised Ista Hold's Steward a proper explanation of why the Weyr's home-skinned hides weren't being produced in the quantities – or quality – that he expected.

“Isn't she going a bit fast?” Damrel asked.

Alaireth had dropped lazily from the slopes of one of the spindles, but her glide had gained in speed with every second of her descent. The other dragons in her path had already been forced aside and, from this angle at least, the queen did seem to be approaching the inner slopes of the bowl alarmingly quickly.

“At least _someone_ is,” M'arsen muttered.

 _He's not worth it,_ Rahnis reminded herself for the umpteenth time that day. M'arsen was Sh'vek's tool, and the pair of them would fall together...if only everything worked out the way she hoped. If. The way today had gone, she was starting to have doubts. Ignoring the brownrider, Rahnis forced a reassuring smile for the Steward. “For a glide, yes, but dragons can manage much more in powered flight.”Alaireth _would_ need to bank or backwing eventually if she wasn't to crash headlong into the far side of the bowl. Rahnis could already guess which option the queen would choose. “Keep watching.”

Even as she spoke, the queen angled her wings and executed a sharp and graceful turn, nothing close to what a green or blue might manage, but still far tighter than many would suspect a queen was capable of. The bronzes and browns who'd already given way to her once were forced to move aside again. _Try not to damage any of them, dearest,_ Rahnis thought with a sigh. _We're going to need them._

_Oh, all right._

Alaireth had been in a disgruntled mood all day, impatient and tired and snappish with almost every dragon who spoke to her. An hour before noon, a small contingent of Flamestrike's younger blues and greens had pleaded for the queen to watch over them during the next threadfall, as if that would somehow spare them the need for their own vigilance. Sasseny's Velsilth wasn't one of them, but she readily confirmed that they'd got the idea from her. Reluctantly, Rahnis had asked Alaireth to report all of them to Ormaith. It was the right thing to do – fighting dragonpairs couldn't afford anything less than complete confidence in themselves, and entrusting their safety to a queen who might be halfway to the horizon and looking the other way when something went wrong was just plain stupid – but she didn't envy either dragons or riders the dressing down that would follow, or welcome the long minutes of soothing, unctuous flattery Alaireth received from the Weyleader's bronze.

Some of the Weyr's other bronzes had proved an even greater annoyance. Pryanth and Cortanth had independently come up with the idea of flirting with Alaireth as a means of drawing more of Linnebith's attention. Alaireth had maintained a wall of silence towards them both, but it hadn't stopped Delene from overhearing everything the male dragons said, nor mitigated the other weyrwoman's spite. The first time it happened, it had taken all the control Rahnis had to stop her queen from overreacting to Linnebith's complaints. The second time, Alaireth did the same for her. There _were_ advantages to following Sh'vek's orders to limit contact with the bronzes – the longer their attentions were focused on Linnebith, the later Alaireth would rise – but it didn't come easily to either of them, and Rahnis was conscious of the fact that she was subduing her queen's natural inclinations on the command of a man whose bronze wouldn't be easy to avoid under the best of circumstances.

After that, the constant stream of trivialities had become very, very grating for both of them. Most of the dragons had simply wanted to feel the reassurance of a queen's attention in the aftermath of Kiath's death: a perfectly natural response, but one which was ultimately insulting; her queen's presence alone ought to have been sufficient. It probably would have been, had Alaireth not been forbidden from asserting her dominance. Rahnis could hardly blame the queen for her mood, given all that.

 _No, you can't,_ Alaireth thought forcefully. _If you must blame someone, blame yourself._

The thought stung, but at least it was honest...and accurate. _Oh, Alaireth!_ _You know that I already do. I'm doing everything I can to fix this._

A little apologetically, the queen enfolded her in the comfort of a mental embrace. It helped, a little, but it couldn't completely dispel her anxiety. There was so _much_ that was out of her hands.

 _Why?_ Alaireth demanded as she circled above the herds. _Why must we wait before you act? Why suffer? Why risk it? Why can't we drive him away right_ now _?_

_Because he's Weyrleader, my dearest, in fact if not by law. Harpers and Lords Holder have other ways of dealing with these problems, but this is a Weyr, and Delene's still acting Weyrwoman. I wouldn't trust her with the basics of prepping my flamethrower properly, and I certainly wouldn't trust her to act on our behalf in this. She'll be worse than she was yesterday when she finds out._

_I don't like her listening to us._

_I know, I know. She's not listening now, is she?_

_No._

_Good. We won't have to worry about her for long, thank Faranth._

_But you still worry about Sh'vek._

_Yes. Delene can't do anything to hurt us. He can. It'll be hard enough swaying the others to take our side even after you've risen. By then, I hope, all our traditions will be on our side rather than his. We're going to need that advantage._

_I like that even less. And I don't like that I can't do anything to help!_

_Oh, love. You help me more than I'll ever be able to say._

_And if tradition_ isn't _on our side, after I've risen? What if I fail you, Rahnis?_

 _If that happens, the failure will be mine, not yours._ If Sh'vek kept his rank...Rahnis really didn't want to think about that, but she couldn't deny it was a possibility. Trath was a long way from fit, and although the other bronzes were in decent enough shape today, their condition a few days from now would depend a lot on how badly the next threadfall played out. Gossip in the Lower Caverns was already sharding pessimistic about the upcoming fall, but it was far more positive than what was being said about F'ren. That wouldn't help him much, either. _If it happens, we'll just have to accept it, and wait for our next chance for me to get free of Sh'vek._ It was rare indeed that the preferences of both Weyr and woman were embodied by the same man, and she'd hardly be the first Weyrwoman to pay that particular price for riding gold. _A turn isn't all that long, and there'll be far more bronzes capable of catching us next time you rise, no matter what new tricks he can come up with in the interim._

So she hoped. The condition of the other bronzes would probably be the _only_ thing in their favour. F'ren would undoubtedly be long gone from the High Reaches the next time Alaireth rose, and C'nir had made it sharding clear to her that he wasn't going to challenge Sh'vek's authority again any time soon. Telemath wouldn't have been a good match for Alaireth anyway, but his rider might have inspired other riders to make their own challenges. M'gan was too unimaginative for that – assuming he and Baxuth ever fully recovered from the trauma of Maenida's death – S'kloss uninterested, and the other Wingleaders were all too accustomed to their obedience. She'd need to be wary of that one herself, if Sh'vek was given the best part of a turn to consolidate his position. That left the younger riders...and she'd seen how well he dealt with them. Talent alone wasn't half as useful to an ambitious rider as loyalty.

M'arsen coughed impatiently. Rahnis gave him a sour look. “What?”

“Other dragons need to eat too, you know.”

Biting her tongue, Rahnis carried on towards the drystone wall that bordered the herdbeasts' enclosure. A handful of riders were sitting atop it, watching over their dragons, but there were several others about who'd crossed thewell-trampled field to join their partners. She noted who was where, then made her way towards where S'kloss was standing. He wasn't the man she needed most right now, but she hoped he'd be quick enough to serve her purpose. _Would you bespeak Hieth for me Alaireth? Quiet as you can._

 _I understand,_ Alaireth answered. _I know what to say, and where to go._

On the ground, the queen's racing shadow spooked a small group of animals to renewed flight ahead of M'arsen's Pellenth. The brown landed heavily, empty-clawed; behind Rahnis, M'arsen himself spoke up. “Did she have to do that?”

“Do what?” Rahnis asked innocently.

S'kloss looked back over his shoulder as Rahnis and the two men arrived at the foot of the wall. “Ah, M'arsen, just who I needed to speak to! I could do with your expert advice right now.” He stretched out a hand towards the brownrider; M'arsen ignored it, and vaulted up one-handed. S'kloss offered his assistance to Rahnis instead. “Good evening to you too, weyrwoman.”

Rahnis clambered up onto the wall and shuffled along carefully until she found a more solid spot to stand. While S'kloss helped Damrel up as well, she lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the last of the direct sunlight and watched as Alaireth made her kill, the queen swooping low to pluck an exhausted bull from the tail end of one of the slower groups of panicked animals. It hung limply, spine broken, from the queen's jaws. _Nicely done, dearest,_ she thought as the queen landed close to a heavily scarred brown.

By then, Pellenth had also managed to bring down his prey. “Whatever it is, S'kloss, it can wait until later,” M'arsen was saying.

“Not really,” S'kloss countered. He pointed towards a large green pulling quill-feathers off her meal in the wherry-enclosure. “Oth, the green my Wing got from Flamestrike. She never touches the feathers, nor half the rest of the good eating on a wherry.”

“Oth? She's always been a fussy eater. What of it?”

“Come with me, and I'll show you.” He gave Rahnis an appealing grin. “You won't mind if I borrow M'arsen for a while, will you?”

As if she would! “Not at all, S'kloss. I'm sure he'll be far more use to you than he would be to me. That's Zallackuth finishing up over there, isn't it? I'll just borrow J'an instead. Come on, Damrel, before the herds get scared our way again.”

Before the brownrider could offer a complaint, Rahnis hopped down from the wall. Damrel descended more cautiously, torn between watching the stones under his hands and feet and the animals racing around behind him. “Do we need to run?”

She shook her head. “A brisk walk will be fine. They're called herdbeasts for good reason,” she explained as they walked, “and so long as the lead animals stay near the walls, we shouldn't be bothered. Once we get close to Alaireth, they won't come near unless they're already scared out of their minds.”

“And if they do?”

“She'll keep us safe, trust me.”

“Ah. And is it always wherries for greens and blues, and herdbeasts for browns and bronzes? That's not what I'd have guessed from what we tithe to our Weyr.”

“What?” She looked back at the wherry enclosure, and confirmed for herself the pattern that the Steward had spotted: there were half a dozen blues and greens on the ground inside the wherry enclosure, and a blue she didn't know on sight and old O'kash's green circling above it. _Shonath's back from Fort,_ she thought softly to her queen, before giving Damrel his answer.

“I see what you mean, but no, it's not the norm. Usually a dragon will make a meal of several beasts, and will choose whichever they fancy the taste of that day. Most of the dragons out here now are probably just taking on a bit of extra sustenance, ready for the long threadfall tomorrow. The greens and blues are just as likely to hunt down a herdbeast as a wherry after a Fall, but a whole one can be a bit much to comfortably digest, especially with the extra weight of firestone they'll be chewing.” It didn't normally stop them from eating the best parts of a beast and leaving the rest to go to waste, much as Oth was doing right now, but perhaps the winter's frugality had finally sunk in.

“I see. And...ah. Um.” Damrel swallowed anxiously. “He won't be hungry for more, will he?”

Ahead of them, Zallackuth had the last quarter of his kill in his mouth, the hoof poking out between his jaws while he crunched down on the bones noisily. The remains of the carcass slid further out as his jaws worked, then the brown suddenly tossed his head into the air and swallowed the limb down whole.

“You'll have to ask his rider that one, not me.” Rahnis slowed to a walk and waved at Zallackuth's rider. “Brownrider J'an! Come and reassure the Weyr's guest, would you?”

 _And tell him to do it quickly,_ Alaireth added. _I'm getting hungry._

 _This won't take long, I promise._ Leaving J'an and Damrel to introduce themselves, Rahnis went to her queen and pressed her face against her neck. _We can head back to our weyr as soon as you've eaten and I've given J'an my message. Sh'vek will still want his report – sooner rather than later, knowing M'arsen – but after this I'm all yours._

Rahnis stepped back from Alaireth and went to crouch beside the cow the queen had caught. “J'an, could you come back here and lift its head for me?”

J'an did as she asked. Rahnis beckoned Damrel closer and traced a line on the animal's neck. “Here's where a person would....” Her head swam; she could feel Alaireth's touch on her mind, blanking the visual part of her memory and the echoes of half-sensed horror that had somehow been carried across the spaces between four minds. _Shells, Alaireth. This is...._

_Don't think about it. You're right. But don't think about it._

She forced herself to keep speaking. “Where you cut to bleed a herdbeast out. Leaves a nice, neat hide, assuming whoever skins it knows what they're doing, but it's not an easy place for a dragon to reach. It can be done, but the horns can be a problem, and one should never underestimate how far a cow-kick will reach. It's best to finish them off quick. Once it's in the air, your dragon's got the animal's whole weight in her claws or jaws. Jerk too hard...would you step back a bit now, please J'an?”

She waited for him to move away, then nodded at Alaireth. The queen lunged for the beast's neck, gripping it from the side between her teeth, then lifted the animal hard off the ground with a quick movement of her head. The cow's neckbones crunched audibly under the pressure of the queen's teeth, and the flesh began to tear almost instantly. Alaireth opened her mouth and let it thump back to the ground just before its head would have been severed from the rest of its body completely.

“And that's why most larger dragons go for a spot lower down the spine,” Rahnis explained. “Even then, there's usually a fair bit of tearing.” She went to crouch beside the cow's body, beckoning the Steward to follow. “Here's where she holed it when she killed it,” Rahnis said, pointing out the bite-marks to Damrel, “and I'd say the tearing to the hide is pretty average for a large dragon.”

“What about smaller dragons?” Damrel asked, pulling back a ragged flap of torn hide with his fingers. “Not that any of them seem very small to me.”

“Claws are even worse than teeth if you want to get a good hide,” J'an said. “Dragons don't mind if their meal’s a bit ripped up, that's for sure. So long as the blood's still warm, Zall's happy.”

“And that's the other problem with skinning kills,” Rahnis added, wiping her hands as clean as she could on the animal's hide. “Riders will rush it when they can feel how hungry their dragon is, and I certainly won't be skinning _this_ one. No, the only way to guarantee a good hide is when the Herdsmen cull the stock...but dragons aren't carrion feeders by choice.” She stepped aside and smiled up at her queen. “Thank you for waiting, dearest. Damrel, did you have any more questions?”

Damrel backed off quickly. “Oh, no! We shouldn't delay her if she's hungry! I'm quite convinced.”

 _I should hope so too!_ Rahnis thought. _Would you mind scaring him off now, Alaireth?_

The queen placed a clawed foot on the cow's hindquarters, and tore open its belly with her teeth. Entrails spilled out, and she nosed them aside in search of the liver and heart.

“Best move back a little more,” Rahnis said, smiling at Damrel. Behind her back, she signalled to J'an to wait where he was. “Or, if you're sure you've seen enough, you might as well head back to the Lower Caverns. I'd escort you back, but I'll need to clean first, and attend to Alaireth. Will you eat here, or back at Ista? It'll be getting late there now.”

The old steward paled, his eyes darting between Rahnis and the mess Alaireth was making of her meal. “At home. I'm not...not hungry. My thanks, weyrwoman. And you, brownrider J'an.”

“And mine, Steward Damrel. I'll have Alaireth notify L'sen's dragon that you're ready to leave.”

Damrel hurriedly made for the safety of the boundary wall. Rahnis didn't stop to watch; she'd already seen M'arsen and Sh'vek coming the other way, and that barely left her any time at all. Shard it, Flamestrike shouldn't have finished their drill half as fast as that! As soon as Damrel was out of earshot she walked back to Alaireth, passing J'an by as if he wasn't there.

“J'an, don't say anything, don't do anything to let on that I'm talking to you,” she said, stroking Alaireth's leg. “Just listen. This is important.”

 _He's listening,_ Alaireth thought between mouthfuls. _Tell him._

“I need you to get a message to F'ren,” she began. She'd tried her best earlier, but M'arsen had been right there, and she wasn't sure that F'ren had picked up on all the subtleties. He'd certainly _looked_ confused enough. “Tell him that doing nothing might not be good enough.”

She and Alaireth had both hoped that a few days of recuperation would be enough for the bronze, but Alaireth had seen him fly today. Trath was recovering well, but not nearly fast enough. The dragon needed more time, and if F'ren was ever going to find some, he'd have to do it soon. “He _needs_ to act, he needs to leave the Weyr tomorrow, and he _mustn't_ refuse to fight.”

That was what she was most afraid of. The bronze had been inhibited from going _between_ by both queens – worryingly easily, too – but with Sh'vek insisting that they fight tomorrow, that order would lapse as soon as thread started falling. Alaireth and Linnebith certainly couldn't afford to maintain the level of oversight necessary to _make_ Trath and F'ren fight the full Fall, and the obvious thing for F'ren to do would be to refuse to leave his weyr right from the outset. F'ren wasn't a fool: he and Trath had nothing to gain by joining his Wing in threadfall, and everything to lose. The problem was, if he did that, Sh'vek would surely have the queens order Trath to stay where he was – and that, they _could_ enforce. F'ren wouldn't have any chance to leave the Weyr after that.

“Threadfall's the best opportunity he'll get,” she continued. “Tell him to make sure he takes it. And to be sure to speak to H'koll before he goes.” That wasn't quite as essential as getting F'ren and his bronze safely _between_ times, but she wanted him to know what she was up against if she could. H'koll was her best hope, there. With a Healer Hall delivery ready to collect first thing in the morning, she'd be in and out of the infirmary several times before Thread fell. The greenrider already knew most of her troubles, and it wouldn't take long to fill in the gaps in his knowledge of what had happened in Maenida's weyr. “F'ren knows what he has to do. That's all. Just tell him, please, J'an. If you've got all that, stamp your feet twice, then go before the Weyrleader gets here.”

A boot thudded against the ground, twice, and Rahnis sighed with relief. _Thank Faranth!_ The message was likely nothing F'ren hadn't already planned on doing for himself, but she wanted him to know that she was with him. She gave J'an a few seconds to get back to Zallackuth's side, then turned and waved them both off. M'arsen had gone with Damrel, she saw, and Sh'vek was still several dragonlengths away, but she couldn't pretend she hadn't seen the Weyrleader beckoning her over. “Sorry, love,” Rahnis said, slapping Alaireth lightly on the foreleg. “I won't let him keep me from you long.”

 _Don't let him get to you,_ Alaireth thought soothingly. _I can wait. I've told Ormaith to make himself useful and bring me another animal._

Rahnis kept her sense of dismay tightly to herself as she walked away. On another occasion, Alaireth might have noticed it no matter what she did, but the queen's attention was already more than half focused on the Weyrleader's bronze. It wasn't unheard of for queens to ask bronzes to hunt for them if they had eggs on the sands, or were lazy, or if they wanted a particular bronze to demonstrate that they knew their place...but usually the task was left to the queen's most recent mate.

Sh'vek, too, was watching his dragon hunt. “She's got quite an appetite, hasn't she?” he drawled as Rahnis reached him. “Nothing _we_ can't sate, I'm sure.”

“You can _try,”_ Rahnis snapped back at him.

He dropped his gaze and looked her in the eyes, full of amused, masculine charm. “An invitation?”

“You're aware you require one then,” she answered. “Good.”

He chuckled softly, then looked back towards the sky. “The Weyrwoman is discerning, Ormaith. Show her what you can do.”

Rahnis stared blankly at the striated walls of the Weyr, leaving the dragon's hunt to her queen to watch. She didn't like the approval she could sense in Alaireth's mind, and had no intention of inadvertently adding to it.

 _If you dislike him so strongly, you ought not to worry so much,_ Alaireth said. _Ormaith is no choice of mine any more than his rider is yours. But I_ will _have the best of this Weyr and, like it or not, here and now he is the standard by which the other bronzes must measure themselves._

It was an uncomfortable truth. _Let's hope that changes. It's not going to be an easy threadfall for any dragon, tomorrow._ Reluctantly, she decided she _would_ watch the bronze make his kill. Hunting instincts came to the fore in mating flights, and there was always a chance she might learn something useful from it. In the end, the bronze's strike was sudden and deft, and not for the beast she'd thought he'd been eyeing. As Ormaith brought his kill back to her queen, for the first time in her life Rahnis found herself seriously hoping that a dragon wouldn't return safely from Threadfall.

The queen made short work of her second herdbeast. Ormaith stood attentively beside her the whole time.

“I don't appreciate having to cut my Wing drills short, Rahnis,” Sh'vek said as the queen finished. “Don't do that again.”

Rahnis made a disgusted noise, but privately she was rather pleased with herself. No one had shown the slightest bit of interest in old O'kash and Shonath's departure earlier in the day, and their mission had been of far more importance. But if she so much as got within a _dragonlength_ of a member of F'ren's Wing, _that_ got M'arsen worried. “Pellenth called you back?”

“He did.”

“So I get your company instead of M'arsen? That's reason enough to put up with him, I suppose.”

Sh'vek smiled again. “The steward's visit went well today? Tell me about it while we walk.”

“Alaireth will want to swim,” Rahnis said, shaking her head.

“Ormaith needs to eat, too, but neither of us need to watch them at it,” he countered.

“...and I'll need to oil her, afterwards.”

“Yes, her colour _is_ starting to show, if you know to look for it. Shouldn't take too long if I help you.”

“I don't nee-”

“You're getting it. Now come along.”

Rahnis did as he asked; it really wasn't a battle worth fighting. Besides, the sooner Alaireth was oiled and settled, the sooner she could ask Sh'vek to leave her and her queen to their rest.

Back in her weyr, she swept Alaireth's ledge and quickly washed and changed. Sh'vek had summoned a drudge to bring up a light meal; Rahnis resumed relating the details of her day between mouthfuls. It helped that Sh'vek already knew what she and Damrel had had planned. The first hour after the Steward's arrival had been spent touring the Weyr's Lower Caverns and acquainting Damrel with the section leaders and their teams. After that, they'd moved on to the Headwoman's office to check on the Weyr's accounts. Rahnis didn't linger on F'ren's brief interruption. The afternoon had been spent in visiting the dragon infirmary, a quick meeting with the senior herdsman while M'arsen went off to supervise some unfortunate's punishment, then a check of the main storage caverns beside the barracks and the entrance tunnel. Damrel had surprised her then by asking to go back to the Weyr's creche and the play and work rooms of the younger children; Rahnis had always thought it the smoothest running of all the Weyr's sections. That, Damrel had explained, was the point. When Hold management went wrong at a high level, attention would always fall on the worst areas, but problems could arise anywhere and everywhere. The better-managed teams would lose people and resources, and their own failings would be overlooked.

Embarrassingly for her, Damrel had been proved right in short order. Quaiya wasn't anywhere to be seen, nor either of her two usual deputies. Rahnis had to ask four different women before she had the complete story: Quaiya was resting in bed, having overworked herself well past the limits of her ageing, frail body. Young Maree, a relative newcomer to the Weyr from two Searches back, was down with the same rash and sickness that half the Weyr's toddlers were currently infected with. Parilly had been moved to the Healers' section to assist them on a regular basis until the Weyr could obtain someone more qualified from the Hall. At a glance, everything was still running smoothly enough: the children were playing and babbling and screaming in their usual cacophonous fashion, mending was being done, teaching songs were being sung, and no-one was obviously hungry or thirsty except the babes latched on to their wet-nurses. But no-one had cleaned up the mess from the afternoon pastries, the infants' reeking laundry pail was on the verge of overflowing, half of the children were wearing dirty or damaged clothes, the daily mending and crafting was well behind schedule and three of the larger youngsters had shoved a bruised and snivelling fourth into the top of a cupboard and locked him in.

“They still do that, do they?” Sh'vek asked when she mentioned it.

Rahnis didn't ask how the Weyrleader knew of it, and continued stirring her barrel of oil. The ash and dirt had a tendency to clump and separate, otherwise. She gave the mixture one last stir, then dipped two fingers into it and rubbed some onto the inside of her wrist. Holding her arm up to the light, she checked for streaks: her usual skin tone wasn't much changed, but the colour was uniformly dull and flat. _I'm all done here,_ she sent to Alaireth, floating primly and half-submerged in the deepest waters of the lake.

Rahnis tapped the end of her paddle on the top of the barrel, and set it back in its usual bucket to drip dry. The other half dozen buckets in the stack beside the wall she started part-filling with oil, one by one. “Parilly's in charge of all the creche shifts now,” she said while she worked, “at least until Quaiya's back on her feet again. Tarkan and Tilga will have to make do with someone else. Damrel says she's one of the first he wants to take back to his Hold with him, to see how well she manages in a different place and with unfamiliar people. He thinks it'd be better doing that than rotating workers through the different sections here.”

Sh'vek moved back from the short passage that led out to Alaireth's ledge. “You've agreed to it already, haven't you?” He didn't sound pleased.

“Delene did it, and she had every right to do so.”

“And how much prompting did she get?”

“Surprisingly little, actually. But she wouldn't have taken being told to ask for your approval very well right then, so I left it at that.”

She dropped the last bucket to the ground at his feet, then turned to see to the rest of her equipment. Cloths, brushes and mops came next: two full sets of each, assuming the Weyrleader _had_ been honest about meaning to help, and wasn't just going to traipse after her getting on her nerves all evening.

“It's a good idea, Sh'vek,” she said, glancing back at him; he _had_ followed her again. Faranth, she felt like she was half inside her storage alcove already! “They won't be carried by their friends, and the capable will come back with enough confidence to stand up to people like Dannia and Varral when we do start rotations.” _And you_ , she thought to herself as he took another step closer. If the worst happened, she'd want stronger allies in the Lower Caverns than Delene's appointments.

Sh'vek placed a hand on the wall and leaned towards her. “I don't care _how_ good an idea it is. These decisions get cleared with me first.”

She shoved her spare mop into his chest, hard. “Then consider it cleared! If you want things done any differently, _you_ can waste your time telling Delene.”

He tossed the mop aside and lunged forwards, grabbing her by both arms. She let out a small yelp despite herself, cursing herself for a fool.

“Must I remind you of your place, gold rider?”

Rahnis bit her lips between her teeth, swallowing an automatic retort that would only have worsened things.

_Rahnis!_

_It's all right, I'm fine,_ Rahnis reassured her queen, wishing she could do as much for herself. _Stay calm,_ please _Alaireth, just stay calm._ Thinking rapidly, she assessed her options. She was far too riled to summon up anything resembling meekness closely enough to be believable, but arguing with him would surely end disastrously. Neither of them were likely to back down, and she _really_ didn't want to force his hand.

His fingers tightened painfully on her arms. “You will _not_ undermine my rule, Rahnis. Not now. Not _ever_. Faranth, what will it take to get through to you?”

The look in his eyes was telling; Rahnis could see that her silence wasn't working, and that if she didn't act, _he_ would. Alaireth was a knot of furious concern in her mind; if the situation wasn't defused soon, the queen would do far more to damage Sh'vek's authority than her own minor act of autonomy had. _I can handle this, I hope,_ she told Alaireth, with all the resolve she could summon. She didn't much like what she was about to try, but she couldn't think of anything better. _Try not to listen, just get back here_ quickly, _please!_

Her heart was pounding, and she'd stiffened up under his touch. Rahnis made a small sound, and forced the tension in her body to ebb away as she took a half step towards him. There was the briefest moment of uncertainty before her language was understood, and answered. The act came almost too easily to her. Trying hard not to think about that – trying hard not to think at all – she lifted her face to meet his.

The sounds of Alaireth's arrival on the ledge outside were as welcome as they'd ever been. Breathless and aching, Rahnis broke the contact and turned her face against his chest, smothering the opposing urges inside her as hard as she could. Faranth, but it was _wrong_ that he could make her react like this.

“Shells, but the pair of you are proddy!” Sh'vek murmured into her hair.

He was right, _flame_ him. Rahnis flushed with genuine mortification. “Alaireth's back.”

“So she is,” he said, and let her go. He stood his ground beside her as the queen entered her weyr and swiftly went to her rider; Rahnis had to credit his nerve for that.

 _Dearest Rahnis! I came as quickly as I could._ Alaireth pressed her nose against her rider's chest, jostling Sh'vek aside. _What under the Red Star were you_ thinking _?_

_It was the only thing I could think of to reinforce his ego. Faranth, I must have been mad...but at least it worked!_

_It worked far too well, from what I can feel...and I know you were trying to block me, so don't pretend I'm wrong. Please don't do that again, Rahnis._

_Don't worry, I don't plan to._ “The Weyrleader offered to help me oil you,” she reminded her dragon out loud, wishing she sounded less shaken. “I've already made my report, so he can leave us to our rest as soon as we're finished.”

“Is that s-”

 _Good,_ the queen said, cutting him off as she slipped her head between the two riders. _I've told him he shouldn't get any ideas. Ormaith promises that his rider intends nothing but to treat you as honourably and respectfully as you deserve._

_You could drive a whole tithe-train through the gaps in that one, Alaireth!_

_Perhaps. Shall I tell him to leave?_

Rahnis was sorely tempted, but she feared it would do more harm than good. _No. I doubt we'd like his answer, and I'm_ not _putting myself through_ that _again!_

 _I agree._ Alaireth nudged Sh'vek more firmly out of her way, her whirling eyes glinting redly in their depths. She settled herself onto the ground, dividing her weyr with her body.

“Rahnis, don't-”

“The mop's wherever you dropped it,” Rahnis interrupted quickly, pretending she hadn't heard him, “and the rest is by the wall back there. Oh, and feel free to use her water barrel if you need to cool your head. It needs changing, anyway.”

Sh'vek chuckled. “Suddenly, your so-called pragmatism makes a lot more sense. Just don't imagine we've finished this.”

Thankfully, he left his goading of her at that. Rahnis gathered her own tools and started work on Alaireth's hide. Slowly, the bright gold sheen of the queen's body became dulled and muted, while Alaireth's steady serenity helped Rahnis re-build her own composure. She let herself drift into the tactile contact, almost forgetting that she wasn't alone with her dragon, even after Alaireth moved again and her work on the queen's wings brought her back to Sh'vek's side of her dragon. The next time he spoke wasn't until they were almost finished, and it startled her. “What?” she asked, ducking beneath the queen's neck.

The Weyrleader was standing at Alaireth's shoulder, studying the queen intently. “She's in very good shape, I said. Her musculature's well balanced, and we could do with more of her type of proportions.” He reached up and tapped the underside of Alaireth's wing. “Extend, please.”

“I've done her wings already,” Rahnis said.

“And a good job you did of them, too,” he said as Alaireth lazily lowered her wing towards him, and extended it backwards towards her tail. “Thank you Alaireth, that will do.”

Alaireth snorted and lidded her whirling eyes again. From beside her queen's head, Rahnis watched as Sh'vek placed one hand on either side of the delicate wing-fabric of her queen's leading edge. Slowly, he felt his way along the length of the queen's wing, counting out the slightly stiffened cartilage of each batten rib as he went. He had to stretch to reach her elbow, and the queen obligingly flexed it at his prompting before he continued on towards the fingerjoint.

“She may be two ribs short of Kiath,” Sh'vek said, “but there's still good depth and flexibility to her leading edge.” His hands paused, and he craned his head round to look back at Rahnis. “Besides, she flies more from the spar, doesn't she?”

“Some queens do,” Rahnis said curtly. “How did you-”

“You don't need to defend her to me. Like I said, she's in excellent shape.”

The Weyrleader's comments left Rahnis feeling uneasy. Alaireth's preferred style of flight gave her just as good a fine control of her lift as flexing the leading edge would do, Rahnis knew, but they both thought it gave her an added edge during rescues. Even so, the exact details weren't an easy thing for an observer, even another dragonrider, to spot from a distance. She herself would have been hard pressed to describe Linnebith's habits of flight, and they'd flown beside the other queen for months now. Sh'vek hadn't flown with them since....

Rahnis sucked in a quick breath of air. “Wait. Those flights you took us on, right after we transferred. You were _studying_ her, weren't you? Right from the start!”

“Naturally.” Sh'vek lifted his arms again and felt over each of the tendons running from the queen's finger-joint in turn, checking for any sign of swelling or inflammation. “Surely it doesn't surprise you; we both know the value of accurate intelligence.” He glanced back at her, and asked, “Does it displease you that I took an interest? You should be flattered; Ormaith says your queen is.”

Slowly, the full impact of what he'd achieved sank in. He'd gained far more than familiarity with how her queen flew, though that alone was bad enough. All those hours of straight flights close to the Weyr would form the bulk of the experience that Alaireth would instinctively draw on when she rose. Her knowledge of the terrain, the local air currents and thermals...they were small things in themselves, but they might be enough to tip the balance in his favour. Rahnis looked away quickly. _Are you flattered, Alaireth?_

_I wouldn't say I was flattered. Such attentions are a queen's due._

“Nasty injury, snapped tendons are,” Sh'vek said, changing the subject, “and they can easily ground a dragon for life. Not so common as thread-damage, fortunately, but there's a slim chance we might see some tomorrow if the wind keeps up. You'll want to keep an eye on the older dragons, as well as the younger ones who still growing into their strength.”

“I _am_ familiar with dragon anatomy,” Rahnis snapped, wishing Sh'vek would leave off the lectures; he was distracting her from remembering all the routes they'd taken away from the Weyr with him, and which they'd made with R'fint and the weyrlings.

“Of course you are.” He gave the queen a heavy pat on the underside of her wing, then walked towards Rahnis, stopping when he was level with her dragon's head. “My thanks, Alaireth,” he said, nodding respectfully at the queen before turning back to her rider with a loud sigh. “Thirsty work, tending a dragon as large as a queen. Did you want help finishing her head and neck?”

Did that mean he was leaving? “No, I'm almost done,” Rahnis said. She gave the contents of her bucket a quick swirl while Alaireth made herself more comfortable on her couch, then wetted her cloth again, holding one hand beneath it to catch the drips of oil. “I do appreciate the help, Weyrleader,” she added, hoping he'd take her thanks as a sign to go on his way. “You've saved me a lot of time, and we could do with the extra rest.”

“Then I'll see to some refreshments.”

Sh'vek was through the door to her rooms before Rahnis could stop him. _Shard it, I thought I told him he'd be leaving as soon as we were done oiling you!_

 _Ormaith says his rider won't keep you long,_ Alaireth thought drowsily. _I can stay awake if you need me._

_No, you get your rest._

_Wake me if you need me._

Rahnis kept her fingers moving in small, soothing circles as she worked her way back and forth over the queen's head. Beneath her innermost lids, Alaireth's eyes were whirling a relaxed mixture of blue and green, full of sensual serenity, and her mind held a tone that reminded Rahnis of a purring feline. She let her mind drift on the wave-like rhythms, worries forgotten, barely thinking at all.

“She's asleep?”

Rahnis started; she'd been halfway there herself, leaning back against the curve of Alaireth's neck with one hand draped across her brow between eye ridge and headknobs. Sh'vek was standing in the doorway, an almost empty wine glass in his hand and an amused expression on his face. Leaving the glass in the wall-niche beside the glow basket, he strode forwards and gave her his arm for support as she extricated herself carefully from the queen's sleeping form. Untangling her mind took longer, and she couldn't stop herself from yawning.

“Looks like you could do with a good night's sleep yourself,” Sh'vek murmured.

“So I've been telling you,” she said, yawning again. “Was there anything else?”

“We were discussing tendon injuries, I believe. R'fint lost a weyrling to a snapped tendon a few turns back, from one of Linnebith's clutches by Telemath.” He gave her knowing look. “I don't imagine _that_ surprises you.”

“Not particularly,” she admitted. It would be better if it had. Faranth, why were almost all of the Weyr's best riders paired with unsuitable dragons, and the best dragons with unsuitable men? And its Weyrleader the worst of them all?

He reached across and firmly took hold of her right hand with both of his, pulling it into the space between their chests. “Don't tense up; I merely wish to illustrate a point.” Turning her hand, he pressed down on the back of it with his fingers, feeling for her own tendons. “A dragon can sometimes manage minimal flight if they lose just the one tendon, but if all of them are severed...yes, that's a _very_ nasty injury, however it happens: snap, score, or...otherwise.”

The _otherwise_ sent a shiver running up her spine; it was exactly what Igen's dragonhealer had done to Ankala's Fagreeth, as soon as she'd clutched a gold egg to replace her. “You don't trust Alaireth to keep Trath grounded, do you? Shard it, she's not the only queen on Pern!”

“You don't miss much either, do you?” Sh'vek said, letting her hand drop. “Tell me....” He fell silent, and waited for her to look at him before he continued. “What message did you give J'an for your weyrmate?”

“Faranth!” Rahnis swore. “You think I was.... You don't trust me at all, do you?”

“About as far as you trust me.” His face grew serious, and hard. “The truth, Rahnis. No more prevarication. I'm not going to interfere with its delivery, but nor am I leaving until I've had an honest answer out of you.”

If he'd figured out that much, he'd have guessed most of the contents of her message anyway. “I told F'ren not to take any chances, and encouraged him to time it.”

Sh'vek sighed and gave a small shake of his head. “I thought as much. Try not to let Alaireth's heat drive _all_ sense from your head, girl. Thwarting me in this won't end happily for anyone. Ankala, remember? It won't be _Trath_ 's wings you'll need to worry about.”

Now that was going _too_ far! “You've had your answer, Weyrleader,” she snapped. “Please leave, before one of us does something we regret.”

He gave her a nod and fetched his coat. Rahnis glared at his back as he shrugged it on and walked away. As he approached the ledge, he slowed and looked back over his shoulder at her. “Something _else_ , you mean,” he said before he disappeared from view. “Sleep well.”

As tired and emotionally drained as she was, Rahnis didn't hold out much hope of succeeding.

 


	38. Chapter 38

_Please,_  
 _Let her wings not falter._  
 _Please,_  
 _Let her flame burn true._  
 _Please,_  
 _Let the Threads fall cleanly_  
 _And the windswept skies_  
 _Return us to our homes_  
 _Alive_

 

**Morning, 15.3.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

 

_The sweepriders have returned._

Pausing in his count of Flamestrike's firestone supplies, Sh'vek looked up to see for himself. _What news, Ormaith?_

_Eshpith says the storm front has slowed. The crosswinds are picking up, but there's little chance of rain during the Fall itself._

_Typical._ The report from the dawn sweep had obviously been far too optimistic, but good news travelled just as fast as bad, and the Weyr's preparations had slackened off noticeably. Sh'vek made a note to give the sweepriders a good talking to later, scanned the other piles of sacks dotted across the bowl, and ran some quick mental arithmetic. The Wings would have to fly at full strength today, with only a small number of greens and blues spared from the fight for an hour at most apiece. Not that they'd have any chance to rest: with the weyrlings not due to return for another sevenday, it fell to the Weyr's smaller, weaker dragons to resupply their peers with firestone. How a Weyr chose to fight a fall had no bearing on the number of threads that actually _fell_ , but it did affect the amount of firestone you used. Full strength meant more stone, and only rarely a lesser number of injuries.

He beckoned over the nearest of the weyrfolk busily adding their burdens to the growing pile of sacks, recognising the young man as one of several failed candidates waiting hopefully for the Weyr's next clutch. “Banyas. We'll need half again as much as usual before the fall's through, and resupply will come early. Pass back the word: the firestone teams are to pick up the pace and keep filling sacks until I send instructions otherwise.”

Banyas nodded and dropped his sacks beside the others, then hurried back the way he'd came. Sh'vek turned next to the young girl on runner duty waiting beneath the awning. She was, supposedly, one of J'garray's girls: a taller than average child of seven turns or so whose only redeeming feature was a marked ability to accurately repeat what she'd heard. “Garsha. Take the same message to the other marshalling points. We're still fighting full strength, and they'll have extra firestone coming their way soon.”

“Full strength, more firestone on its way,” she repeated.

Sh'vek waved her away with a sigh and started back towards his weyr. _Ormaith, I assume you've already told the Wingleaders the news?_

_Yes. Shall I inform the queens, too?_

_There'll be no change to their placement, but yes, they ought to know. The wind shear won't make rescues easy for them. Thinking of wind shear, could you ask Alaireth if Rahnis is in the Records Room right now?_ _I wouldn't mind checking the fourteenth North Tillek fall of '03 while I sort out your straps. I seem to recall that one suffered badly from wind shear._

_Rahnis is with the Healers. Should I call her back?_

_Never where she's wanted. No, never mind._ He took the steps two at a time, wondering if he'd have time to search for it himself.

_Delene's in your weyr. You could always ask her._

_What? What's she doing there?_

_Walking. And thinking. Too much of both to hear me._

Scowling, Sh'vek pushed open the inner door. “Delene?”

“Oh, now I've lost count again!” the weyrwoman whined, and sank prettily into the nearest chair.

“Shouldn't you be somewhere else?”

She flashed him an alluring smile. “I was, _all_ morning. Rahnis and I went to the Healer Hall, remember? They said we can collect the extra stock we needed next restday.”

The state of the Weyr's medical supplies was another thing he urgently needed to check up on, Sh'vek realised. “Your tanks are ready?”

She flicked a hand dismissively. “Rahnis did them for me first thing. Everything else is all organised. That Damrel's worked wonders!”

That didn't entirely tally with his own understanding, nor with what Rahnis had told him last night. The Istan steward had been a good choice for the Weyr – he'd already come up with some promising ideas – but he also had a lot of misconceptions about Weyr culture. Riders certainly didn't have time for extra chores, even after retiring from Threadfighting! Whatever Delene thought of him, Damrel wouldn't become an expert over-night. There was still a lot more to be done before the Weyr's Lower Caverns reached its former standards of orderliness, but at least they were moving in the right direction.

“It's so _good_ to have someone running things properly again,” Delene added, completely oblivious to the fact that, by rights, it ought to have been her job...and that the man she was praising would have had her working on sewing and mending rather than her own embroidered embellishments if he had his way.

Sh'vek decided it was wiser to change the subject. “I've just had word from the dragons flying the pre-fall sweep. Looks like the rain's going to hold off completely.”

“Oh, _good._ There's nothing worse than threadfall and drizzle.” She stared off across the room, her lips working silently.

“The wind will be rough throughout, so I'm going back to yesterday's plan of sending the Wings up at full strength. Be watchful for strain injuries in particular once we pass the usual shift change, as well as the lacings from inattention and exhaustion. The wind shear will probably pick up as soon as we're west of the mineholds. It should compress the fall to some degree, but the clumps will become more unpredictable from then onwards. It should-”

Sh'vek broke off and frowned at Delene. _Ormaith,_ what _is she doing?_

_Thinking. Counting. Arranging furniture and other things._

_She's not listening at all, is she?_ He decided to test his theory. “But, provided we arm the dragons with _redfruit_ instead of _firestone_ , I think we'll manage well enough.”

“Mmm hmm.”

“Delene?”

She looked round and simpered at him. “Ormaith's already told Linnebith what to expect. Really, Weyrleader, you work yourself far too hard! You ought to relax more. I've barely seen you at all since we lost Maenida and Kiath; please say you'll let me help? You've been under _so_ much strain.”

Gritting his teeth, he shook his head and turned away. _I tell you, Ormaith, the sooner this farce is over and done with, the better._ He yanked his heavier set of fighting straps off their peg, and made his way back to the ledge where Ormaith was now waiting for him. He slung the two neck-pieces over the dragon's lowered neck, then vaulted up after them from Ormaith's foreleg to secure the ridge-loops properly, baffling the buckles behind a comfortable fold of wool-hide. All around the Weyr, other riders would soon be making similar preparations. Not everyone was quite so conscientious, of course. Linnebith was perched on the rim near the Starstones, attended to by half a dozen different bronzes. There might have been more, had there been any room to spare for them.

 _Senseless fools,_ Sh'vek thought to himself. _They_ weren't doing themselves any favours. _Did Linnebith listen to you any better than Delene did to me, oh dragon-of-mine?_

_Of course she did! A queen will always listen if you tell her what she likes to hear. She likes to know when the Wings will most desire to keep her safe, and when her suitors will need to fight the hardest. She knows which ones are weak and must prove themselves to her, and which ones are strong, and will fight the most splendidly. She thinks herself an inspiration to us all. She will sneer in disdain at the bronzes whose Wings fail to fight well, and be ready to rescue their injured should any mishap befall them. No, you need not worry about Linnebith, Sh'vek. She will do her duty well today, as well as a queen of her calibre can._

Sh'vek winced. _Why couldn't she have picked one of the other girls on the sands that day?_ Not that there'd ever been much chance of that. The others might as well have never been Searched, for all the chance they'd had to Impress. _So. Linnebith's becoming more blatantly flirtatious. How proddy_ is _she, exactly?_

Ormaith shrugged the query aside. _She's responding to the interest of the bronzes, that's all. She knows she won't rise soon, and so do some of the others...but I've been encouraging the idea that Kiath's unfinished flight is responsible for our heightened senses. Few realise that it's Alaireth they sense._

_Few? I was hoping for none._

_Some are sharper than others. Telemath suspects, for all that he's up there now. Pryanth knows, I'm sure._

_Pryanth?_

_Yes, Pryanth._

_Huh. I suppose J'garray does think of very little else. Who else?_

_Hieth._

Sk'loss had been there at the end, with C'nir and M'gan, and Rahnis had obviously used him to remove M'arsen yesterday. Perhaps his dragon had picked up on it then? The young wingleader had a sharp mind and led Windfire well, but Sh'vek had never understood why one of the blues or greens hatched that day hadn't picked him before Hieth did. _Well, none of them are much of a worry._ He squinted at Alaireth's ledge and the darkness of her weyr. _Where's Alaireth? Is she still keeping quiet?_

 _Look up,_ Ormaith prompted. _Behind you._

The queen was clinging to the tip of the tallest spindle, wings spread for balance and silhouetted against the sun. Perelane's Seenth had often done much the same thing, close to rising or otherwise. “Queen of all she surveys, eh?”

_She is not happy about being restricted to the trailing edge. Linnebith's behaviour does not please her either, and she is resentful that her rider chooses to restrain her from seeking such attentions for herself. She struggles to understand her rider's reasons for denying her, when it is she and not Linnebith who we will all soon chase, especially after what happened last night. I flatter and appease her, but she is haughty and ill-tempered with everyone. She is conflicted. She was enraged with you when she returned to the Weyr, but Rahnis would not let her defy us as fully as she wishes to, then or now. A queen will not mate with a bronze who cannot out-fly her, but surely you have done just that. If you were a dragon, you would have proved yourself a worthy mate for her rider._

_Ah, but I'm not a dragon, and neither is Rahnis. Besides, the flight will set a far better precedent than anything her proddiness or my whims might manage before then._ Sh'vek swung his right leg over Ormaith's neck and dropped back to the ground. Purely out of habit, he slipped two fingers behind the primary strap, checking the fit and tension. Finding everything in order, he gave Ormaith a mental nudge to open his wings so he could take the measure of the bronze's hide and musculature, much as he'd done while helping Rahnis oil and dirty her queen the previous evening. _Rahnis knows what I'm doing, trust me. Providing she behaves herself, she'll get nothing but courtesy from me. Hate is a powerful thing, dragon-of-mine, and I'd be a wher-brained fool to add any more fuel to hers; it's blazing well enough as it is. That's at the heart of it, take my word for it. She has little enough to bargain with, and I'm quite content to leave that particular option on her side of the table. I wonder if Rahnis realises how much better off she'd be if she simply ignored us?_ He gazed out across the bowl, pondering which way the queen might fly. Much would depend on the weather, but if all the hours he and Ormaith had spent on straight flights with them after their arrival were any clue at all, he suspected she'd make for the coast. _When do you think Alaireth will rise, Ormaith?_

_Not today. Tomorrow, I expect, and with very little warning._

_Best we send Linnebith and Delene away before nightfall, then._ Sh'vek looked back up to the rim, wondering which, if any, of the bronzes might be persuaded to accompany her. _Call the bronzes away from her, Ormaith. They ought to be worrying about Threadfall now. I know I should be._ One by one, the bronzes all peeled away from the rim, gliding either to their own weyrs or all the way down to the bowl. Heggith was last to leave and made the flashiest landing, but the others all seemed to be conserving their strength. They'd need it, today. Even with the Weyr fighting at full strength, Sh'vek knew they'd be hard pressed to keep Pern safe through the coming fall. That would have been true at any time, but the Weyr had yet to recover itself from Kiath's death. There were no good answers, and he'd had to make some hard choices. He slapped Ormaith on the neck, and slid back down to the ground. _I'm going to run my last ground-checks now. Start checking in with our Wing. I want to speak to them all before they begin chewing. They'll need it far more than I need to depress myself with tales of threadfalls past._

He took the steps down to the bowl two at a time, and started jogging towards the infirmary. Even from a distance, he could see that Tarkan's team had their preparations well under way. A dozen lengths upwind of the infirmary itself the outside firepits were blazing well, smoke and steam rising clean and almost vertical. The cauterising irons had been set to heat, but were still dark and dull: a long way from reaching their proper temperature. The large cauldrons above the other two firepits were boiling furiously, sterilising the wooden numbweed-paddles ready for use. The barrels of numbweed were already out, thirty groups of five placed five dragonlengths apart, stretching between the infirmary and the lake. Supply tables were laid out beside the barrels, along with stacks of stretchers, boards and trestles for urgent treatment.

Sh'vek stopped when he reached the first of the supply tables, and watched the preparations for a few minutes. The Weyr's laundryworkers were folding, laying out and rolling up bandaging of all descriptions at the tables, while the more dexterous womenfolk threaded sutures, their fingers heavily stained with redwort. Tilga was moving back and forth between the tables at high speed, checking off items on her slate.

“Tilga, here a moment,” he called to her as soon as he saw her pause. “What's your status.”

She slipped the slate into her apron – likely the first of several she'd wear today, and already as badly stained as her hands – and scurried over. “Nothing of note. Word on the ground says the Weyr's gone back to flying full Wings today?”

“That's right. How are we for supplies? I'd hoped the weyrwomen would bring everything you needed back with them from the Hall, but Delene told me delivery isn't for another few days.”

Tilga nodded. “Best the Hall could do, Rahnis said. We're fine here with what we've got – more than fine, truly – but I can't speak for the dragonhealers. They _say_ they're also fine, and I saw their figures myself, but I know Rahnis isn't happy with them yet.”

“Where is she?”

“Follow the sound of raised voices. I don't think Varral's ready to give in just yet.”

“Thank you, Tilga.” Sh'vek turned towards the lake, where Pakall's crew of dragonhealers were based. Much the same preparations would be taking place there, only scaled up to account for larger injuries. A pair of greens glided down as he made his way over. Their riders unburdened them of a dozen heavy sacks apiece, which the waiting weyrfolk hurried to collect and empty into the waiting barrels: the ice delivery, no doubt, but the sacks looked suspiciously thin. As the two greens launched themselves back into the sky for another run, Sh'vek spotted Varral, and sighed. The laundrywoman did not look happy; worse, she was heading right for him.

Varral waited until she'd stomped right up to him before launching into her tirade. “Weyrleader! You need to put a stop to this! She can't just _take_ the Weyr's best linens! Old sheets, them she's welcome to slice into ribbons, but-”

He raised his hand to cut her off. “Varral, if they're not needed, you'll get them back.”

She rolled down her sleeves and placed her fists on her hips. “Aye? I know full well healers have a delivery coming soon, don't think I don't! I won't be told to do without when they've got surplus!”

“Varral, I'll _deal_ with it. Now get back to your duties.” He waved her away before she could think of anything else to bellow at him and looked around for Rahnis. She was standing with her back to him near the ice-barrels, shears in hand, talking to Pakall.

“...but they'll do in place of Healer Hall gauzes in a pinch,” Rahnis was saying when he got close enough to hear. “I hope they won't be needed, but they're the largest lengths we have. Don't cut them for more ice compresses until Fall is over and we know what we're dealing with.”

The dragonhealer patted her on the arm. “We won't run out, weyrwoman Rahnis.” He pulled a brave smile, and raised his voice, clearly for Sh'vek's benefit. “Why, we've half as much again of everything that's _usually_ required, even the gauzes. You'll tell the weyrwoman that's enough, won't you?”

Rahnis turned with a start. “Sh'vek!”

“I gather the Weyr's best linens are about to go the way of Delene's surplus silks.” He lifted the lid on the nearest of the ice barrels – just as he'd thought, N'mark and Mellora had scrimped on their loads. “Gauzes. Why wasn't that part of what you and Delene went to the Hall for?”

“I'd hoped to have them added to our delivery this morning, but Benden cleared the Hall's stocks out yesterday.”

“I believe you told me we _weren't_ dangerously low on them yet.”

“We're not, under normal conditions...but it's not going to be a good fall.”

“Has there ever been such a thing?”

Pakall laughed. “Not that I've noticed, although the way some of your riders go on about this fall or that, you'd think they'd been out at a Gather dance. But see for yourself, Weyrleader. We're all stocked and ready, excepting the rest of the ice, and we've not forgot your briefing. Crosswinds, wasn't it? And that always means strain injuries, on top of the scores, but if you're flying the full Weyr like the weyrwoman says, the scores at least shouldn't mount up too far.”

Rahnis gave both men a dark look, then spun on a heel and walked away, chucking her shears onto the nearest table with a clatter. Pakall sighed. “There's someone who could do with a Gather dance or three.”

“You may be right,” Sh'vek said. Rahnis was clearly angered, but at least she'd kept her opinions to herself for once. He took one last look at the dragonhealers' preparations, and decided that all was well. “Everything seems in order here. I'm sure you're well enough supplied already, but there's no harm in being prepared for unexpected disasters.”

“Aye, a flock of wild wherries might fly past and shit all over everything.”

“Quite.” Sh'vek wondered who'd come up with that one. “If it comes down to it, just start cutting up the linens like she told you.”

He caught up with Rahnis within a handful of dragonlengths, far enough from the healers to be well out of earshot. “ _Try_ to make your proddiness a little less obvious would you? There's only so much slack I'll give you for it. Tell me, is there anyone who hasn't borne the brunt of your temper today?”

“You, for one,” she muttered. “But I'm always happy to oblige.”

“Aren't you.” He stepped across her path, stopping her in her tracks. “Talk to me. This mood of yours is fed by more than your queen, isn't it?”

“What's to say? The fighting Wings aren't part of my remit, now or ever.”

“Ah. Then it's threadfall, isn't it?”

Rahnis pursed her lips and didn't answer; a sure sign that she held a strong opinion on the matter. Sh'vek rolled his eyes. “Tell me what you're thinking, woman.”

“Of _course_ it's fardling threadfall!” she snapped. “Every last dragon in this Weyr is still feeling the pangs of Kiath's loss to some extent. Even Ormaith is out of colour, but he's not half as distressed as the other bronzes. Of course, now that _Trath_ 's insisted he's fit to fly instead of staying in his weyr like any sensible dragon would, none of the rest are likely to admit otherwise.”

It was odd that F'ren hadn't listened to the woman's advice. He gave her a challenging look. “For someone whose queen isn't meant to be talking to the other bronzes right now, you're remarkably well informed on their condition. Particularly-”

“I have _eyes_ , Weyrleader.”

“Use them, then. Dragons recover fast; faster than you do them credit for.”

“Not fast enough. And it's not just them! The bronzes might have borne the brunt of it, but they're hardly the only dragons suffering. The younger dragons simply don't have the experience to process the loss of a queen in such a manner. And as for the newcomers to the Wings.... Faranth, Sh'vek! Doesn't it worry you? I know it worries me, and Delene's so scared she's gone back to doing everything she possibly can to _not_ feel the other dragons. That won't help matters either. Half your Weyr's flying in a state of dread. Your dragons are exhausted. Exhausted dragons make mistakes...and misjudgements...and end up laced.” She gave him an accusing look. “And you have the weakest Wings on the _upper_ flight.”

He'd thought it might be that. “And the strongest ones below, _exactly where they should be_. Had you ever flown in a fighting Wing yourself, you'd know that.” Not that it had been an easy call to make at all, deciding on which Wings to place where. C'nir and G'dil would keep Delene's attention on Cloudburst once the threads started falling, and the weyrwoman was on familiar terms with most of the dragons of Thunderclap Wing. T'frick was eager to prove himself as their Wingleader, but Sh'vek wasn't ready to let him out of his sight during fall quite yet. S'kloss' Windfire and his own Flamestrike completed the lower flight, guaranteeing that whatever went amiss above their heads, Pern would still be well defended. “Or do you think Pern's last line of defence can afford to be ineffectual?”

“No...but some of the dragons in Pern's _first_ line of defence might as well not be flying at all, for all the good they'll do up there! Nine times out of ten, when a green makes a mistake, she gets away with it. Bronzes don't, and they've a lot more wingsail to worry about. I realise they're rare events, but it'll only take a few major wing scores before we're out of gauze completely. More than three and we could easily see dragons grounded for good because the repairs don't get seen to quickly enough.”

“Hence the linens.”

“Hence the linens.”

He watched her gaze drift across the bowl, finally settling on Snowfall's marshalling point.

“It was either that, or ask you to ground half the Weyr's bronzes,” she added. “I didn't think I'd have much luck convincing you, there.”

“Ha! And who would benefit most from such a respite, I wonder?” he asked with a smile. “You were right; the linens were the wiser choice. Faranth willing, they won't be needed. Linnebith will be doing what she can to limit the injuries in the lower flight.”

“Alaireth and I could do a lot to help. I've prepped both sets of our tanks, so there's no reason that I-”

“I'm not going to change my mind, Rahnis. I'd prefer not to risk you and Alaireth today, but it would look strange if you didn't fly at all...and, you _will_ be needed for rescues. You'll be primary contact, and I don't want large tanks getting in the way and you or her getting injured as well as a result. Yes, it limits your flaming capacity, so you'll skirt the trailing edge with the pregnant greenriders, and monitor the ground crews; you'll have enough work on your hands with that. The Wings will have to manage without you. Is that clear?”

She nodded, far too meekly for Sh'vek's liking. It made him wonder what she was planning. “The linens were a very good idea, Rahnis, but believe me when I tell you I hope your worries are misp-”

_Sh'vek!_

Sh'vek raised a finger and gestured for Rahnis to stay put. _What is it, Ormaith?_

_Luth has just informed me that his rider is too ill to fight._

_What? Why?_

_A problem with his bowels. He's vomiting, too._

_Shard his bowels! Is the man mad? Tell Luth to have F'ass report to the healers RIGHT NOW. They're to give him something to stop him up, but he's fighting today if he has to wear every pair of trousers he owns!_

_He's already there. But Sh'vek, he's not the only one._

Sh'vek groaned. _Who? How many?_

_Only three more. P'lindis and G'treb and D'barn._

_Not F'ren?_

_No. D'barn thinks he might be able to cope. I've told Kanleth and Dondrith and Corhoth that their riders must report in to the healers too. They're on their way now._

Fears of a Weyr-wide illness dissolved into sheer fury. _P'lindis! That sharding, wher-brained...if this came of any overindulgence last night, I swear I'll...._ He shook his head and growled, and started back towards the infirmary again. _Tell Trath I want his rider,_ now. _Simpeth's too._ If it _wasn't_ incompetence or malingering, he knew exactly where to look next for the truth.

“What's happened?” Rahnis demanded.

“It seems there'll be a couple of bronzes sitting this one out after all,” he called back over his shoulder. But, by Faranth, they'd wish they weren't by the time he was through!

 

 

 

 

Beneath his legs, Sh'vek felt the tell-tale rippling in Ormaith's muscles that presaged the end of the dragon's current gout of flame. The bronze angled his jaw precisely as the flames died away, and half a dragonlength ahead the last strands of the well-tangled clump of threads crisped to harmless char. Sh'vek used the brief respite as they passed the billowing black motes to lean out the other way and look back over his own shoulder, giving the fighting Wings a much-needed critical inspection. The clouded slopes of the Western Mountains were steadily receding behind them, while beneath the Wings the mineholds and marginal grazing of the foothills had long since given way to vineyards and the richer cultivated lands of the Tillek peninsula.

The large-scale picture was still exactly as he'd anticipated for this point in the Fall: each Wing was split into three unequal rows, the first two separated by a good fifty lengths from one another, while the smallest, fastest group flew transverse beneath them. It was a relatively compact formation, allowing a Wing to swiftly and thoroughly clear the sky of threads within a small region of the fall, at the expense of needing to maintain a fast, zig-zagging course in order to cover their assigned area in full. From what he could see, the Wings were still keeping pace with the leading edge, packed somewhat more tightly towards the southern border where the threads were falling thickest. The details, though...that was where the problems lay, that was what filled him with dismay. Flamestrike was barely a third of the way through its passage across the leading southern quadrant of the Fall, but there were already more dragons out of position than otherwise. If he'd been pressed to guess at his Wing's formation based on what he could see alone, he certainly wouldn't have named the layered rows that he'd instructed the lower flight Wings to stick with. Windfire was just as bad and, from what little he could see of them, Cloudburst and Thunderclap, well off to the east as they fought their way back to the trailing edge, were even worse.

He'd hoped to be past the worst by now, but the strong, gusting winds from the south had proved depressingly persistent when it came to tearing through the ranks of fighting dragons. The only sense of order he could pick out in what he saw was in which of his riders had been Searched from Tillek and the other coastal Holds; Seaholders had a better instinct than most for how a strong wind could catch at a dragon's wings, and how to counter it while still flying a straight course.

Above them all, the sky was heavily streaked by bright silver as the tumbling threads caught the sunlight as they fell. It was coming down in patchy clumps and thick swathes, in spite of the work of the Wings of the upper flight. Almost directly overhead, Snowfall's dragons were dark silhouettes spouting bright golden flame. Given their condition, Sh'vek wouldn't have trusted Snowfall's leavings to any Wing other than his own, today. H'rack and Simpeth were putative Wingleaders in P'lindis's absence, but Sh'vek was under no illusions regarding who was truly giving the orders overhead. And F'ren had called _him_ mad for pushing the Weyr to its limits?

Skyfrost, flying parallel to Snowfall in the north-west quadrant, provided an even more colourful display with dragons of every hue glinting in the sunlight. He'd given all four Wingleaders on the Upper Flight express orders to concentrate on the densest regions of the Fall and to maintain the fluid and flexible rows that would allow the dragons to focus their efforts as needed. They were holding their Wings' formations as well as they could – or so they claimed, though he'd be hard pressed to prove otherwise – but otherwise their efforts were achieving remarkably little, searing neither their fair share of the threads, nor significantly reducing the Fall's clumpiness.

 _They're keeping themselves alive, Baxuth reports,_ Ormaith told him.

The dragon shared the image he'd just received from Baxuth: the sky ahead of the upper wings seemed alive with writhing, tumbling threads, falling in callous disregard for the placement of the dragons determined to destroy them. Sh'vek could feel the bone-deep exhaustion of the dragon whose sight Ormaith was sharing as the beast turned ponderously to meet a clump that had slewed out of reach before the chance to flame it was lost completely. _Sloppy work, even with a leg-score._ He blinked the image away and concentrated on his own surrounds again. _Think we've a breather coming up. More stone?_

 _Please._ Ormaith burned his next target cleanly, and Sh'vek gestured for the nearer of the flanking greens to move ahead and temporarily take the bronze's position on point. With the experience built up over many turns of threadfighting he reached down and tossed Ormaith his firestone blind, his eyes fixed instead on the skies ahead and above as he studied the falling threads. _Angle the Wing five degrees south on our next pass,_ Sh'vek prompted _, and check with A'zad's Roflith. It's been too long since we last had a report on Icestorm_. F'ass and the others had blamed their bowel sickness on something wrong with their breakfasts that morning, off meat or perhaps klah from an uncleaned kettle – they'd all eaten at the same table – but Sh'vek knew the signs of a dose of weyrling purgative when he saw them. He'd administered it to thick-tailed dragons _and_ their riders often enough in his Weyrlingmaster days. The latter wasn't medically necessary, but it did a sharding good job of ensuring that the pair in question didn't repeat their error; P'lindis and the others wouldn't be leaving their privies before nightfall. _It doesn't matter how hard pushed A'zad says they are, they still need to keep me informed. Cabreth's still ferrying stone for Icestorm? I want him reporting the Wing's status after every pass: position, sackloads, any new injuries and anything that strikes J'melden as odd. Can't hurt._

 _Roflith reports no new injuries,_ Ormaith answered, a little later. _He says A'zad swears he can't be held responsible for the mess they left to Thunderclap last sweep. They blame the wind. Cabreth also complains over the conditions. Many catches are going awry, with dragons blown off course before their riders can make the catch._

_That's what close drops are for. Cabreth's a flaming blue, not a weyrling!_

Sh'vek had to admit, the wind _was_ the biggest problem they faced today, almost worse than the density of the threads themselves. A single descending thread, caught by a gust, could entangle itself with half a dozen more within the space of the same number of dragonlengths. The upper flight might have bequeathed a Fall as regular as Tillek's vineyards to the lower Wings, but it wouldn't stay that way long under conditions such as those they were obliged to fight in today.

As if to prove his point, in the corner of his eye Sh'vek caught sight of blue Tundreth's right wing catching and filling on a gust his rider hadn't prepared him for, tumbling the dragon almost into the path of Denchath's flame. Both dragons vanished, Tundreth emitting the beginnings of a pained shriek before he disappeared _between._

 _Remind them_ all _again, Ormaith,_ he thought tiredly _, that Thread doesn't fall sideways without good reason. If you can_ see _that it isn't falling straight down, you know that something's pushing it, and dragons aren't immune to the wind any more than thread is._

 _I have told them so,_ the bronze replied. _Denchath returns. Tundreth retires. I call Velsilth in early to take his place._

Sh'vek sensed his dragon touching the minds of the other dragons in their Wing, nudging them back into proper position yet again and encouraging the weary, and then confirming the green's incoming visual – not that _that_ particular pair were likely to make any mistakes in their visuals again any time soon. Velsilth might be young, but he'd learned to trust Ormaith's judgement when it came to bringing in such replacements. His bronze had always had a good eye for where to place the smaller dragons within a Wing, knowing who would fight well beside whom as a matter of course and managing to balance out the strengths and weaknesses of the different partnerships at an instinctive level that Sh'vek had taken turns to learn to consciously emulate. That left Sh'vek to concern himself with the greater task, that of ensuring that the minimum possible number of threads survived the Fall long enough to burrow. A harder task than usual, today, given the condition of his Wingleaders.

The wind gusted again and Ormaith sent a wordless apology as he countered it, fingersail joints aching as the dragon strained with effort to stay on track towards the next clump. Sh'vek scowled at the stormclouds massing on the southern horizon, still stubbornly keeping their distance in spite of the howling gale that ought to have carried them exactly where he wanted them. An hour or two from now, and the lands below the fighting Wings would be soaked. The threads would be well past by then, naturally.

The forward row of Flamestrike's dragons finally reached the edge of the corridor. Sh'vek gave the signal for the dragons to make their turns, and closed his eyes against the windblown char until the manoeuvre was complete. _Trailing edge report?_

_Alaireth repeats her offer to come forwards. The Wings have done well so far; she reports a sixth burrow from the tangle that overwhelmed Thunderclap, but it was caught early by the groundcrews stationed near the road. Also a seventh, likely just a missed stray, that she and Rahnis dealt with themselves after returning from the Weyr. The number of injuries concerns her more, particularly on the upper flight. The wind is not quite as disruptive at that altitude, but the Fall is compressed by it and very heavy in places. Roggolith's lacing was very severe, and she asks how bad Baxuth's scoring was._

Baxuth's leg-score was old news to Sh'vek, but it shouldn't have been something Alaireth was aware of, back on the trailing edge and with clear instructions to leave the Weyr's bronzes to Linnebith. _Who did she hear that from?_

_Roggolith._

_Ah. That's all right then._ W'ryne would delight in any injury to M'gan's dragon, even while his own was suffering.

_He wanted to fight on, like Baxuth is doing._

_And if he only had a leg score, he could. Baxuth didn't lose the use of half his wing. There, that tangle next for us._

Ormaith powered forwards, while Sh'vek pondered what he might share with the queen, _Tell her the upper flight is doing well, and pass back the latest messages from Baxuth, Simpeth, Roflith and Mumvath. Not Trath's complaints, mind. Then ask Delene to check on Thunderclap for us again._

The weyrwoman had struggled to keep pace with the conditions of the dragons in Cloudburst and Thunderclap Wings, but that was as good as he'd hoped to have out of her today. T'frick seemed to be bearing up well to the rigours of leading a Wing, in spite of Delene's disparaging remarks, and nothing spurred a Wing on more than the sight of a queen beneath them to be protected. He might even make a good second-in-command, if C'nir carried on as he was. Cloudburst was making heavier work of things. C'nir had given G'dil full authority over half the Wing – Faranth knew, upwards of thirty flaming dragons were a burden at the best of times, and C'nir and Telemath were a long way from their best today – but G'dil was doing the bare minimum with his share of the Wing. Sh'vek could already imagine what the man's response to any criticism would be, but flaming a tenth more thread than usual was a long way from an adequate performance when the threads themselves had fallen half as hard again. The Weyr was fighting over low-yield grazing lands at present, but the fields of Terres Hold were drawing steadily closer; if G'dil didn't pick up the fight soon, he'd have to be removed.

_Delene says Thunderclap have changed the greens on firestone duty, and are flying better for it._

_Bespeak Telemath,_ Sh'vek instructed. _Heggith and G'dil have another crossing to prove themselves before I assign someone else to take charge._

The warning proved enough to inspire G'dil and Heggith to better work. Over the next two hours, the wind slowly brought the rain clouds a little closer...though it offered little in the way of respite, and even made the threads harder to spot on the south-bound passes of the Wings. Sh'vek was considering a few changes of his own, moving the tiring dragons of the transverse row back up to the rest of the Wing and replacing them with fresher beasts, when he felt the deep dismay that signified a dragon's death quickly followed by a flurry of dragon minds calling on Ormaith's attention.

 _It was Baxuth! Baxuth suicides!_ the dragon exclaimed in shock. _They cut a blink too fine and emerged into a clump blown off course. M'gan took the brunt of it. Drunuth says it killed him instantly._

 _Shard it!_ Sh'vek hastily reviewed Skyfrost's situation. M'gan was dead, W'ryne's Roggolith was too injured to fly...but the other Wingsecond, T'teck, was a disciplinarian rather than a leader, a man who bullied his wingmates on M'gan's say-so, mostly to make M'gan look better...but Ormaith had passed on word earlier that M'gan had planned on sending him and Junsheth back to the Weyr early. Had he done so before dying? Moving H'rack over from Snowfall would've been another option – if he wasn't needed where he was, he could sharding well make himself useful elsewhere – but he, too, had retired from Fall early following Simpeth's nasty score along a trailing edge. Brown Athreth and I'ressack were in Skyfrost now. They could be called on, or brown Yulioth and Fr'lel. I'ressack might never have been able to inspire confidence in others the way Sh'vek himself could, but no-one thought less of a brownrider for that. His dragon had been a clutchmate of Ormaith's, and the pair had ample enough experience to do what needed doing for the space of a single Fall. So long as Sm'say didn't take it into his head to take charge...Drunuth was an ill-proportioned, ill-mannered beast, but he was still a bronze, and he might well try it.

_Athreth tells me that Yulioth holds their course under Junsheth's lead, but Junsheth is struggling and Drunuth demands Baxuth's place._

_If Junsheth is already struggling then Yulioth leads Skyfrost! Make that fardling clear!_ Half a dozen dragonlengths beneath him, R'dallan's brown Tolcth slewed out of their position at the far end of the row, the young rider waving for Sh'vek's attention. _Tell Tolcth our transverse row can maintain their current formation for the rest of this pattern. I'll make the changes when the situation with Skyfrost has settled._

Ormaith provided ongoing reports between threads, building a daunting picture of the growing disarray overhead. Yulioth had spent barely five minutes leading the Wing from Baxuth's former position before Fr'lel called on the leading row to switch places with the tail. Sh'vek had had his doubts about that from the start – the mental focus was very different, and after several hours of fighting it wasn't easy to switch from going for the biggest clumps you could find to the fastest fallers you could flame safely, and vice versa – and, sure enough, the reports of mild strains and mis-flamed threads and minor scores were soon on the increase. All Sh'vek could do was trust that Fr'lel knew what he was doing, and that his greater familiarity with the riders and dragons who'd previously been flying Skyfrost's tail-row would be enough to offset the damage...but he didn't think it likely. _Have Velsilth take that clump out in our place, Ormaith. Tell her to take her time, follow it all the way down if she has to. I want your attention up top when Skyfrost makes their next turn. They've an interior coming up, yes?_

Ormaith confirmed, offering a visual from what appeared to be Snowfall's perspective. The two Wings were drawing close, working inwards from opposite directions. _Trath says Yulioth hasn't signalled whether Skyfrost will take the overlap high or low. He tells us Snowfall goes low, chasing clumps._

Sh'vek approved; from their current position, Flamestrike would be hard pressed to catch them before they grounded.

 _Yulioth is scored!_ Ormaith announced mere moments later. _Full lacing; he jumps to the Weyr and Alaireth follows to catch him there. I hear conflicting orders from Drunuth and Junsheth; the transverse row rises, while Drunuth leads the tail row into descent. I countermand Drunuth. Skyfrost Wing is confused. More scores reported. They're in the worst of the fall. Panic is beginning to take hold. Trath sees, and shares with me, and warns us that Snowfall cannot cover for them. He asks us who commands, and warns us that Junsheth is looking overflown._

 _Get Delene's attention. I want Drunuth and Junsheth to both back down. Athreth and I'ressack to lead, with Pryanth and J'garray in support._ Flamestrike could arguably manage without an established Wingsecond far better than Skyfrost could right now. _Send them now, warn the other lower Wings to be ready for a worsened load, and tell Tolcth he's moved up a notch._

Ormaith's own flaming and the occasional blink _between_ stole Sh'vek's attention away from the wider fall in brief intervals as Flamestrike hastened northwards in their pattern, working their way towards the chaos bequeathed them by Fr'lel's mistake. _Quickly, dragon-of-mine. We've a lot of air to cover._ If things didn't improve soon, he'd need to do more than merely move Wingleaders around. Switching places with Cloudburst was one possibility.

_Delene won't like that. She says they're suffering too much where they are._

_Then they'll be better off flying our quadrant._

_No, she says we need to fix Skyfrost. Alaireth returns, and hastens to join Linnebith. Score reports increasing again. Pryanth leads Skyfrost into another turn. Pryanth misjudges the wind! More scores, and Kenareth reports a wrenched finger joint! Delene tells me they're breaking. Three dragons have fled the skies, uninjured. Delene makes me hear their fear! Linnebith is in danger, beneath Skyfrost! Skyfrost_ must _flame, they_ must not _fear._

Sh'vek swung his head round to check on his own Wing. There was no other option now; he raised his right arm, fist clenched. _Tell Flamestrike to be ready to jump on my mark._

_Trath calls again for our assistance. Skyfrost is broken, he says._

_Do it, we're ready. Delene's to tell C'nir to take charge of Skyfrost's remnants in our place. Visual?_

Ormaith provided an overlay observed through three pairs of eyes. _Here. Flamestrike shares it. Current formation, fast crossing, then reassess?_

 _Exactly. Go!_ He let his fist fall, and black _between_ enveloped them all.

Flamestrike emerged into chaos. It was luck more than skill that kept everyone alive through the intensity of their first pattern. The winds on the upper flight were noticeably lighter than they were fifty lengths beneath, but although the dragons fared better on that score, the threads themselves more than made up for it. Screams of pain, dragon and human, were all too common, and the air was filled with the confusion of smoke and flame, and still more threads appearing anywhere and everywhere you looked.

During the brief moments he could spare from Ormaith and the rest of the Wing, Sh'vek found his attention being repeatedly drawn towards Snowfall, assessing the other Wing's performance. They were flying the same formation under the same conditions, and had had far longer to settle into the rhythm of the upper flight than Flamestrike had...but even so, they were faring far better than Sh'vek would have expected them to.

 _Trios,_ Ormaith explained wearily. _They have many young dragons, most comfortable in such groups, and all watch out for each other. The formation is an illusion: each trio flies its own fight, guided into shape across the sky by Trath from the tail-row, while Benth flies point. Greens Ulleth and Graslath take turns leading the transverse row. Brown Zallackuth monitors the physical state of the dragons. Sacquith monitors the fall locally._

You needed a lot of trust in both directions to delegate so much, so broadly. _He won't know what's hit him if anything goes wrong,_ he told his bronze. _Shard it, if I had his luck, we could probably fly the rest of this fall smokeless._

_I'd rather not. More stone would be good right now._

Sighing at Ormaith's literalism, Sh'vek turned back to the needs of his own dragon, his own Wing. Slowly but surely the fight was falling back under his control, with only a handful of minor scores to count against them. _I think it's safe to switch those three greens over to firestone duty now. As for us, that's our last sack finished. What's the burrow status?_

_All cleared. Alaireth requests an update._

_I don't see why not. If she's not too busy, let her share our view for the next few minutes._ Flamestrike were flying in good order, making faster work than Snowfall were in the adjacent quadrant. Well managed or not, the other Wing was visibly approaching its limits, its dragons making awkward turns and blinking out of sight far more frequently than they should. Sh'vek grinned to himself, pleased by the contrast of Ormaith's able disposal of a particularly tricky clump, against the distant backdrop of a clumsy mis-flame by Trath that almost got the blue passing beneath him scored. _Good work, Ormaith. Have Delene commend the Wings. We've only a little longer to hold out now._

 

 

 

 

It was raining when the Wings finally returned to the Weyr: fine, cold droplets that stung the skin gently, falling from clouds that wreathed the Spindles with tendrils of grasping white. Flamestrike was the last Wing to make it home, accompanied by both the Weyr's queens, having first seen that the last of the burrowing threads had been fully eliminated. Sh'vek watched the two golds peel away as the Wing crossed into the bowl, dropping down towards the injured dragons being treated on the stony ground between infirmary and lake.

Already, the post-fall rush appeared to be easing off. The most minor dragon injuries were usually treated by riders, and those of riders by friends, wingmates and weyrfolk; numbweed dealt with those the triage team had judged the next least worst cases. They were the ones now receiving attention from the more junior members of the dragonhealer team: strained muscles, minor tears, and any scores shallow enough to spare a dragon from serious harm but still deep enough to require stitching.

Not everyone was so fortunate. Brown Sellelth had been deeply scored across his neck, while blue Laralth and green Takrynth had both suffered broken wingbones from their preposterous mid-air collision. Why at least _one_ of them hadn't jumped _between_ was beyond Sh'vek's ability to fathom.

Roggolith was so covered with sheeting and bandaging and healers on stepladders that Sh'vek could hardly recognise him; they'd been working on him for several hours now, and showed no signs of finishing soon. The men working winches were still adjusting the scaffold made of wood and wire – and likely also Varral's best linens, now – which would support Roggolith's laced wing while it healed. Brown Yulioth crouched beside the bronze; despite suffering an almost identical injury, the healers had already finished their work on his wing and moved on to treating the more minor scoring on his flank. Green Weeth was only mildly scored, but badly overflown, and was now being treated for the leg she'd broken on landing. Idrith, another green, had a tear that ran the full length of her primary mainsail, and Kenareth had apparently come as close to losing a tendon as Pakall had ever seen. The last of the major casualties was brown Eranth, whose rider wouldn't have survived the threadstrike that had bored deep into the musculature of the dragon's left wing had it fallen a handspan closer. Sh'vek had already had word that Eranth wouldn't fly again, but apparently the healers were hopeful for the others.

The two golds landed, Linnebith beside Roggolith and Alaireth beside Eranth. The crowd around Roggolith's head briefly parted, and Sh'vek frowned at the sight of the squat, dark man standing with a hand resting on the bronze's headknobs. Shard it, that was St'nebel, and the dragon wasn't Roggolith, it was Noksath! _When did Noksath get laced?_ he asked Ormaith in dismay. It had to have been one of practically the last threads of the fall for him to have missed the news.

_It was._

Sh'vek adjusted his count to three serious lacings.

 _Seven major wing repairs,_ Ormaith corrected.

 _I don't need you saying 'I told you so' as well. Tears and broken bones need stitching and splints, not gauzes, and Eranth's score counts as back, not wing. Three serious lacings. Three._ The Weyr hadn't come through the fall intact, but aside from M'gan's death they'd done better than Sh'vek had hoped to by far. Skyfrost would sorely feel the loss of both Baxuth and M'gan. Fortunately, the only other fatalities had been blue Jinnith and young R'mayder, a popular weyrbred lad of fifteen turns. Young as they were, they, too, would be widely grieved.

Sh'vek had Ormaith lead the Wing to land in neat precision before the entrance to the Lower Caverns, where they were met by a loud cheer from the waiting weyrfolk. He'd brought thirty-nine of Flamestrike's dragons back from Fall unscathed, including his own. Under the circumstances, he counted it something to be proud of. He slid to the ground and made the rounds amongst his wingriders, praising each and every one of them in turn before dismissing them to their leisure and what was either a very late lunch or an early dinner. They'd fought sharding well today.

 _Shall I tell the Wingleaders to go to the Council Room, Sh'vek?_ the bronze asked wearily.

Not wanting to know who the dragon meant to include in that group, Sh'vek shook his head. _Not yet. Just take their tallies for now; there's time enough for the debrief later. Let them eat first, get their men settled._

The other Wings ought to have been receiving similar care to his own towards Flamestrike...had more than half his Wingleaders not been killed, injured or otherwise removed from their duties today. Sh'vek scanned the bowl, finding, as he'd half expected, that the majority of the Weyr's dragons had already dispersed. Directly opposite the infirmary, Windfire's riders were heading for the lake and the Lower Caverns in two orderly groups. Outside the gaping entrance to the Hatching Cavern, C'nir was addressing a handful of riders from both Skyfrost and Cloudburst Wings. Beyond them, Snowfall's dragons and riders were in the process of disbanding from a tidy runner-shoe. The tall form of H'rack's Simpeth was easy to spot amongst the pack; scored or not, they weren't even _pretending_ to be in charge any more.

Faranth, but it was infuriating! Sh'vek returned to Ormaith's side and started attacking the buckles of Ormaith's straps with gusto. It was all too clear now where Snowfall's primary loyalty lay, and it _wasn't_ with him any more. _I should have grounded him as soon as P'lindis reported in sick. Even if it_ was _what Rahnis wanted, what I thought they_ both _wanted. I wouldn't have minded their absence all that much myself, but I can hardly label them cowards now._

 _You weren't to know,_ Ormaith said consolingly.

Sh'vek grunted in disdain. _Oh, but I should have. If he hadn't wanted his dragon to fight, not all the queens on Pern could've hauled them out of their weyr today. They fought because they meant to, because they saw some advantage in doing so. No, this was always the risk with a Wing like that. If Snowfall had broken, it wouldn't matter...but they didn't, and now it does. Shard it, I should have publicised his crimes right from the start. Perhaps if I had, I wouldn't need to add 'incitement to mutiny' to them now. Tonight will have to do, I suppose._

_It's one Wing, Sh'vek, and hardly a respectable one at that._

_Tell that to Alaireth._

Ormaith sidled away as the last of his straps slithered free, and spread his wings with a strong, noisy flap. _Oh, I'll do far better than that,_ the dragon said as he launched himself into the short flight across to his ledge.

Leaving the problem of Snowfall and F'ren to stew for a while, Sh'vek followed his dragon on foot and turned his mind back to the other Wings. He'd long thought the High Reaches over-burdened by bronzes, but you couldn't replace a Wingleader like M'gan with just anyone. St'nebel could hardly move back to Skyfrost again; Noksath would be out of action for half a turn or more. _R'dallan might do for a Wingsecond,_ he mused to his bronze as he slung the straps back onto their peg, _but we'll keep J'garray with us for now._ Perhaps he could trade him and G'dil both for other men, as well as offloading F'ren?

Ormaith swung his great head in his rider's direction, eyes whirling a lambent green. _You might as well deal with him now, you know. He'll only sour the rest of your day too if you don't._

 _Ah, I suppose you're right._ _Trath's still outside the barracks?_ Leaving his dragon to settle himself on the couch, Sh'vek left his weyr and started across the bowl.

Even from a distance, it was clear that whatever good a day of rest and care had done for Trath's condition, the rigours of threadfighting had thoroughly undone the bulk of it. Sh'vek might have pitied dragon and rider both, had they only been anyone else, but in their case it brought only a deep sense of satisfaction. Trath was slumped across the ground, his rider resting supine beside the dragon's head. Sh'vek could _see_ the pain and tension in the way the dragon held his wings: half unfurled, fingerjoints resting on the ground. At a dragonlength away he could make out the tremors running across the dragon's chest and down the length of his neck. Sheer exhaustion was only part of it; rare as they were, those symptoms were a clear match for a dragon struggling to regurgitate firestone ash.

As if on cue, the bronze scrambled to his feet and turned aside, necked arched and head held low with jaws agape. The dragon made a choking sound as a stream of steaming grey slurry jetted onto the ground. A second attempt brought up the last of it, judging by the amount. Uncaring of the mess that now splattered the puddled ground beside him, the dragon wearily lowered himself back down. F'ren sat up, and extended a hand up to his dragon's chin as Trath swung his head back towards him. The gesture was achingly reminiscent of one of Sh'vek's last memories of A'minek and Cassonth. Sh'vek closed his eyes, and allowed it to return in full, indulging himself as he rarely did. It was a sweet pain, almost worth the renewal of spite and grief which would reliably follow. As weyrlings, the two dragons might have hatched from the same egg, they were that much alike. Their riders had been very different in character and appearance, sharing little more than their inherent talents and the depth of their unlikely friendship, as well as whatever clothing A'minek had outgrown. F'ren had spent the bulk of his weyrlinghood wearing one or another of A'minek's cast-offs. Sh'vek had burned the lot, after the accident, but it hadn't stopped F'ren from living what ought to have been A'minek's life. If it had been A'minek fighting thread beside him today, leading a Wing through fire and chaos...well, that long-abandoned dream might have life in it yet.

“Weyrleader?”

Sh'vek opened his eyes again, scowling at the man for daring to interrupt his thoughts. _Soon_ , he promised himself. _I'll have my answer soon._ “What?”

“I had the same question. Did you want something?”

F'ren's voice was hoarse with fatigue; he looked almost as badly off as his dragon. Damp hair stuck out from his head at all angles, and his face was streaked with the ash of threadfighting and dried blood from a minor wound: a char-burn rather than a score. He'd lost his coat somewhere, but the shirt beneath had been thoroughly muddied by the wet ground he'd been lying on. Sh'vek turned up his own collar and wiped the raindrops off his face with his hands. “Snowfall's threadfall report,” he demanded. “Before the rain gets any worse, if you will.”

“Ah.” F'ren closed his eyes and lay back down. “H'rack was in charge today. Ask him.”

It took some effort, but Sh'vek managed to restrain the urge to go over and kick the man where he lay. “I'm asking you.”

F'ren tucked his hands behind his head and slowly recounted the performance of each member of the Wing, the injuries suffered, roles assigned, and whatever decisions he'd made during the course of the fall he deemed worthy of mention. They'd flown well today; grudgingly, Sh'vek told F'ren as much. “You did a good job with Snowfall. I'll admit, I was surprised you decided to join us.”

“They're my Wing. _We all of us fly with each other.”_

“You chose a lousy time to make a point of it.” Sh'vek tossed his head in the dragon's direction. “He'll pay for it, tomorrow, when Alaireth rises. Assuming you still intend to chase her.”

F'ren reached out and caressed Trath's head. “Catch, not chase.”

What a ludicrous thought! Sh'vek let his eyes run the length of the dragon's body, sharing the image with Ormaith, and chuckled. _The higher they climb, the harder they fall, eh Ormaith?_ “I'll tell Rahnis you said that, later. I don't think _she_ was too pleased by your decision to fight Thread.”

F'ren pushed himself up onto his elbows and shook his head. “I'd have explained myself if she gave me half a chance.”

“Why should she? Why you imagine she feels anything but loathing for a murderer is quite beyond me. She'd rather have seen you staked out for thread than exiled as a dragonless criminal, you know.”

“That's a lie!”

“Is it?” It wasn't the entire truth, but it was good enough to seed the man's mind with a few more doubts. “I can have Ormaith share the memory with your dragon if you'd like. Or would you prefer something a little more...pleasant?” He waited while Ormaith passed the memory across to Trath.

F'ren suggested he do something _very_ obscene.

“No? I suppose it wouldn't be novel, for you.” He looked back down at F'ren, who was in the process of staggering onto his feet. Faranth, but it would be a pleasure indeed to knock the last of the fight out of the man!

“You _are_ coercing her, aren't you?” F'ren said in a quiet, uncertain voice. “She's not just following orders for my sake? What have you done to her, Sh'vek?”

Sh'vek told him. It was a pity F'ren had never really weyrmated before, otherwise he might have been able to make use of it sooner, but watching the man's composure break was still something that Sh'vek would treasure for a very, very long time.

By the time he was through, the rain had got considerably stronger. F'ren was leaning dispiritedly on his dragon's flank for support, and there was more red than green in Trath's whirling eyes. Amusing as it was, Sh'vek decided that enough was enough; even a bronze almost too exhausted to fly could be dangerous.

“The rest is between Rahnis and myself,” he said. “We're done here. You're confined to your weyr until I say otherwise; no exceptions, this time. Meals will be brought to you.” He gave the bronze a disparaging look. “You've half an hour to get him off the ground and back to your ledge before my patience wears thin. If you're still here by then, assuming you haven't drowned, I'll have you locked into the empty weyrling barracks. Delene and Linnebith will leave the Weyr later this afternoon, and you'll be publicly charged with Maenida's murder as soon as she's left. Your trial will begin two days hence. I'd deal with you sooner, but...well, I'm sure you can imagine why.”

Behind F'ren, Trath bared his teeth menacingly, but it was an obviously empty threat; F'ren's face held all the truth Sh'vek needed to see. It scarcely mattered that the betrayal the man feared hadn't yet come to pass; the threads of his doubt had burrowed deep, and would surely prove as damaging as Sh'vek could wish for.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just an incidental note - if you want the background soundtrack for F'ren and Snowfall during this chapter, check out 'Follow Me' by Muse. It's one of many, many of their songs that resonate with this story for me.


	39. Chapter 39

_'And who will you choose?' asked the queen of her rider,_   
_'when we fly as one and the bronzes must chase?_   
_For the handsomest man lacks the wings that are swiftest;_   
_for all of his ardour, he won't last the pace.'_

_'Then the kindest', she answered, 'whose dragon adores you._   
_When we fly as one, he'll be leading the rest'_   
_'Ah, but does he deserve me?' the queen wondered idly_   
_'As Weyrleader, surely, he wouldn't be best!'_

_The lady considered the options before her_   
_'When we fly as one and the bronzes must chase,_   
_why, the wily old bronze of our boldest wingleader,_   
_with all of his tricks, he'll be first in the race.'_

_'He might if you liked him,' said dragon to rider._   
_'When we fly as one, then your heart matters too._   
_So a dragon of cunning who suits all the weyrfolk_   
_is no good for me if he's no good for you.'_

_'So who will you choose?' asked the queen of her rider_   
_'when we fly as one and the bronzes must chase?'_   
_'All I know,' said the lady, 'we'll choose him together.'_   
_And that is the truth that all weyrwomen face._

 

**Early morning, 16.3.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

 

Deep within the shadows of the Weyr's peaks, F'ren peered over the edge of his dragon's ledge. Other than the full complement of Snowfall's riders breaking, grading and bagging firestone beside the bunker, there was little to observe. All the usual morning Wing drills seemed to have been cancelled for the day. With a few exceptions, the Weyr's bronzes were all out on their ledges, their attention locked on Alaireth's weyr. Telemath and Pryanth were up on the rim, but they were the only bronzes whose riders benefited from ground-accessible weyrs; the other riders would be reluctant to allow their dragons to stray too far from their sides today. Ormaith hadn't moved from where F'ren had seen him last: lying sprawled across Alaireth's ledge. A woman bearing a tray was heading up the steps, delivering breakfast from the look of it.

F'ren turned away and went back to watching his Wing. At the rate they were working, the Weyrlings would be spared firestone chores for sevendays, if not months. Snowfall's protest on his behalf had been ill-advised and short-lived, but he was determined to keep to his ledge for as long as their punishment lasted. It was abominably cold, and his head and body ached with hunger and tiredness. No-one had brought him any food, and he didn't make a habit of keeping much in his own weyr beyond a skin of water, a few pieces of fruit, and the occasional luxury picked up from Gathers. He'd eaten the fruit for yesterday's breakfast. In retrospect, that had been a mistake. Since then, all he'd had to eat was the last of some spiced bean chutney from Igen, scraped from the bottom of its jar with his fingers. It hadn't sat easily in his stomach. He wasn't expecting better fare than water-rations today, but at least _someone_ would have to fly up and bring it to him.

 _They might just throw a skin onto the ledge,_ Trath suggested from the comfort of his couch.

They might, at that. _Well...if they don't want me to break my curfew, they'd better do it soon._ Up beside the Starstones, F'ren could just about make out Denna mounting up onto green Ulleth, preparing to leave their post. Dawn watch had officially finished the best part of an hour ago, but their replacement was only now winging his way up to the rim.

 _Looks like Drunuth,_ he told Trath, unsurprised by the dragon's reluctance to stand watch. The young bronze was the third of his colour to stand a shift on watch since the previous evening, following Telemath and Hieth during the night.

 _I know,_ Trath answered. _He's already reminded me that we're not to leave our weyr. I told him I'll stay here only as long as I choose, and wished him well of his view when the rest of us leave._

F'ren didn't laugh. _It'll be soon, then?_

_Not yet. But some time before noon, I think._

Word hadn't taken long to spread. F'ren had been oiling Trath's hide when the bronze alerted him to Delene and Linnebith's imminent departure from the Weyr, early during the previous evening. He'd gone out onto the ledge in time to see the queen go _between_ , accompanied by G'dil's Heggith, which hadn't surprised him much, and also by T'frick and Goth, which had. P'vash's Mumvath had appeared on his ledge barely a minute later and bellowed a curious query across the bowl, which was instantly picked up and echoed by a number of other dragons. Pryanth had tried a more direct approach, landing on Alaireth's ledge and poking his head inside her weyr. The dragon had backed out again pretty fast, harried on two fronts; Ormaith had claimed the queen's ledge for himself as soon as Pryanth had vacated it. F'ren had lingered on his ledge, hoping to see the Weyrleader's bronze being driven off as well but, disappointingly, that hadn't happen. Instead, he'd seen Rahnis and Sh'vek leaving the Lower Caverns and ascending the steps up to the queen's weyr together.

Neither of them had left it again.

F'ren hadn't spent an easy night. Finishing his work on Trath's hide had kept him occupied for a time, but had done little to banish the worries and doubts that persistently returned to his thoughts. Trath was a great comfort, but even a dragon as large as he was only needed so much in the way of oiling and massaging. F'ren had eventually decided that he'd done all he could and left Trath to get some sleep; the dragon had needed it. Softly lit by glows, Trath's hide had held the gleam of perfect care, but beneath his skin the dragon's body held a long tally of lingering aches. F'ren had managed to alleviate the worst of it and had found no sign of any incipient permanent damage, but there was no question that Trath's strength and fitness would remain greatly compromised for many days to come.

Down by the bunker, Snowfall's riders had started to disperse. Sighing to himself, F'ren brushed a few loose stones to the side of the ledge with his foot, then went back inside. The glows he'd left beside Trath's couch were aging rapidly, but they were still sufficient to light his way. _How are you feeling, Trath?_

The bronze extended one of his hind legs, following it with a wing. _I'll feel better in the air._

F'ren went to Trath's head and rested his face against the dragon's broad cheek. _Liar. Still nothing from Alaireth?_

 _No,_ Trath replied. _Her mind is closed to all of us._

F'ren had his suspicions as to why. “If he's hurt her....”

_Alaireth wouldn't let anyone hurt her rider, F'ren._

“Not normally, no.” F'ren pauses. “If Sh'vek was telling the truth yesterday, neither of them might have very much choice about it. And if he wasn't....” What then? _Perhaps she really_ does _prefer his company to mine,_ the nagging voice of doubt in his mind suggested, and not for the first time.

“Shard it, why won't she speak to you, Trath? How can I help her if she keeps me in the dark, being drip-fed nothing but Sh'vek's spite-filled piss, as if I'm nothing better than a barrel full of dead glows?”

Trath seized on his worries and his slow-building anger, and fed them into his own growing determination. _We help them by winning this flight, F'ren. Think only of that. I will be strong enough because I have to be, for you and for them and for all of us._

His dragon was right. _Tell her that, now, if you think she'll hear you. That we're ready, that we're going to fight our hardest, that we'll give this Weyr a flight they'll remember for the rest of their lives._ He felt his dragon reaching out towards the queen, felt the effort of pushing against her mind and then the rushing surge of need and lust that came with contact.

 _I have told her,_ Trath said. He paused, weighing his thoughts within the privacy of his mind before he spoke again. _She says that now is no time to give Rahnis false hope, or all of us will suffer for it._ The dragon shifted, lifting himself gingerly from his couch. _Ormaith also spoke to me. I've been told to bring you to the Weyrleader. To them both._

 _Really?_ F'ren considered staying put, uncertain of whether obeying Sh'vek's orders held any advantage for him at all. The man probably wanted to gloat some more, or to punish him for having Trath bespeak the queen; he'd be wasting his time with both, if he tried. _I'd say no, but I think even a short flight will do you good, and I'm not going to miss a chance to see Rahnis. Let's take the long way round, shall we?_

Trath went to stretch and flex his wings on the ledge while F'ren went back inside to grab his simplest set of flying straps: a single long loop of leather which rarely saw use unless Trath was carrying baggage or several passengers, but was quickest and easiest to put on and take off. It didn't fit as well as it ought to, but now wasn't the time to punch some extra holes. Opting for the looser fit, F'ren silently asked Trath to set his neck against the ground, then mounted up with care. _Ready?_ he asked the dragon.

Trath answered with a burst of sense: the aching stiffness of his limbs, the feel of the wind against his hide, and a deep, burning anticipation of the flight ahead.

 _Easy, lad!_ F'ren thought. _Just once around the Weyr for now._

The bronze made a long leap outwards from his ledge, wings wide, using the descent to build up speed. He hadn't tried for much height in his initial jump, saving the strength of his hindquarters for later. F'ren concentrated on the _feel_ of the dragon's flight, noting where the strain was worst. The stiffness itself would pass, but there was a heaviness to Trath's wingbeats that would surely limit his speed, and the curvature of his secondary mainsail was slightly off. That, too, might be purely due to stiffness, or it might be due to over-stretched tendons in the aileron joints; one too many sharp turns would be a very bad way to learn it was the latter. As for the dragon's stamina, he hadn't a clue how long that would last, beyond the obvious of _not as long as usual_.

 _We might time it,_ F'ren suggested. He was aware that Trath was still uneasy about _between,_ in spite of yesterday's few long-distance jumps and regular blinks, and he hadn't wanted to raise the idea until he ran out of other options. _Go back to Broken Hold for a few days of peace and quiet. It's what Rahnis wanted us to-_

 _No._ Trath was adamant in his refusal. _I cannot do that, F'ren._

_I know you've been forbidden to leave, but Linnebith's gone now, and Alaireth wouldn't stop you. We're not going to get lost if we're certain of where and when we're going._

_It's not that._ Trath banked into a less-than-tight circle half a length above the starstones, ignoring Drunuth's alarmed squawk. _Kiath is still there. I think she'll_ always _be there._

Wishing he'd never mentioned the idea, F'ren pushed back hard against his dragon's memory of the dead queen before it could grow any clearer. Faranth, Kiath's demise was the _last_ thing Trath needed to be remembering right now. _Kiath's gone, Trath,_ he thought forcefully _._

 _Now, yes. Then, no. If we pass her,_ between, _I do not think I should escape her. I never want to hate you like that again, F'ren. I won't do it._

 _And I won't ask you to._ He squeezed against Trath's neck with his thighs. _Just the here and now for us. We've another queen to look to; she'll give you all the strength we need._

Beneath them in the bowl, a dragon bellowed stridently. Ormaith, F'ren knew without looking. _Better do as he asks,_ he thought, sensing Trath's reluctance. _Save the rest of your strength for later, eh?_

With the Weyrleader's bronze occupying Alaireth's ledge, Trath was forced to land on the floor of the bowl. Leaving his straps in place, F'ren slid to the ground and started towards the steps. Sh'vek was waiting for him at the entrance to the weyr. F'ren strode across the ledge assertively, without slowing, intending to make it absolutely clear to Sh'vek that he'd get neither salute nor any other sign of deference from him. The man's feet were bare and his clothes were uncharacteristically dishevelled. Intentionally so, F'ren suspected.

Sh'vek lifted a hand from his side and waved him on, smiling easily. “Go on through, F'ren.”

F'ren realised then that his steps _had_ faltered. He smothered a groan and reached out for Trath's support. _Remind me why I'm doing this?_

“Help yourself to some food if you want,” Sh'vek added as F'ren walked past him. “I imagine you're hungry.”

He was, of course – very much so – but that didn't mean he was ready to accept any of Sh'vek's leavings.

Inside the weyr, Alaireth was wide awake, sat like a feline on her couch. Her legs were folded and her tail lay neatly against her body, the tip twitching watchfully. Her eyes whirled, their colour changing from green through to blue and red and back again faster than F'ren could keep track of. The colours intensified as he walked closer.

F'ren slowed to a stop as he drew level with the queen's head. “Good morning Alaireth.” Sh'vek might not merit any courtesy from him, but she surely did. “Thank you for hearing Trath today. I hope Rahnis is well.”

She tilted her head, giving F'ren the impression that she was paying attention to far more than his voice alone. His notion was confirmed when she bespoke him. _My Rahnis is as well as can be expected, under the circumstances._

“Alaireth.” It was outright unsettling, hearing a dragon other than Trath as clearly as that. “What do you mean? Has he hurt her?”

The queen's eyes grew perceptibly redder. _Far less than_ you _have. Your concerns are misplaced. Ormaith's rider knows better than to risk my wrath._ Her thoughts were curt but poorly controlled, and F'ren could sense the weight of emotion boiling away beneath the surface of her mind, consisting primarily of annoyance, concern and a highly sensual disdain.

 _She is concerned for us as well as for Rahnis,_ Trath explained. _But mostly, we disappoint her._

 _Do not think I doubt your valour,_ the queen added. _Nor should you doubt her heart. It will please me if you do what she asks of you, this time._

F'ren wasn't sure if he should thank her or apologise or send Trath to start blooding right away.

Alaireth opened her jaws and yawned. _Yes to the first,_ she thought, _but you owe my Rahnis the second. My bronzes must wait a little while yet for the last. Forget it for now. Pay attention and try to think with your head, bronzerider. It will serve you far better._

From the inner doorway, Sh'vek cleared his throat impatiently. F'ren followed him into Rahnis' quarters, still half distracted by the queen's touch on his mind. He found Rahnis sat at her table, the half-eaten remains of her breakfast pushed aside to make room for the documents she was working on. Her hair was damp, she was simply dressed, and her face was grave. She laid her pen down when she saw him and whispered something; his name, he thought.

Sh'vek had gone to stand behind her, one hand resting possessively on her shoulder. “That will do, bronzerider,” he said, before F'ren could come any closer. “Go on, Rahnis.”

She closed her eyes for a few moments and took a deep breath before speaking. “Bronzerider F'ren. You have been charged with the murder of Weyrwoman Maenida and her queen, Kiath. For a dragonrider convicted of such crimes the penalty is banishment to a different Weyr and the surgically enforced grounding of the dragon.”

Her voice was low and hard; she was struggling to keep the emotion out of her words. F'ren had been under no illusion that Sh'vek would seek anything other than the most extreme sanctions, but it was cruel of him to force her into making that pronouncement. Worse was the look of sheer resignation on her face. “Rahnis. It won't come to that, I promise you.”

“No, it won't,” she said. “The Weyrleader has agreed to rescind all the charges ag-”

“ _Rescind_ them?” F'ren blurted helplessly. As upset as she looked, that was the last thing he'd have expected to hear.

“To rescind all the charges against you regarding Maenida's death,” Rahnis repeated, “on the proviso that you transfer to Ista Weyr before Alaireth rises.”

Sh'vek was offering him a transfer, _now,_ after all those turns of denying him one? _Faranth, Trath, we've got him rattled! Reassure Alaireth, please! Rahnis must be afraid we'll take it._ F'ren gave the man a feral grin. “Worried you'll lose this flight, are you?”

Sh'vek erupted into laughter. “Worried? By _you_?” He shook his head, and gave a final huff of a chuckle. “Oh no, F'ren. I'm not worried in the slightest.”

“Why else ask me to leave?”

“It's Rahnis who wants you gone, not me. I'd prefer it if you stayed and paid for your crimes. Fortunately for you...the Weyrwoman was _very_ persuasive.”

“ _Faranth_ , Rahnis!” F'ren looked for some sign of denial in her eyes, and failed to find it. All the time he'd spent worrying for her, haunted by Alaireth's silent tolerance of Sh'vek's bronze on her ledge.... He twisted his head and yelled in the queen's direction. “How could you let her do that to herself?”

 _Do what?_ Alaireth's voice echoed painfully inside his skull. _She may share her heart with you, but her choices are her own, even as limited as they are. Don't you dare make things any worse for her now._

“Worse?” _She's the one who's given up, not me!_ He felt Alaireth pulling her mind hard away from his in the instant he completed the thought.

At the table, Rahnis gasped, as if in pain. She shrugged free of Sh'vek's hands and furiously pushed herself to her feet, kicking her stool aside. “Shard it, F'ren!” she snarled, grabbing a fork from the table and throwing it at his face. Lacking the accuracy honed by turns of riding a flaming dragon, her throw missed his head by a fair margin. She made a frustrated noise and started towards him.“You _chose_ not to conserve Trath's strength. You know the constraints I'm under!”

“I know _now_.”

“Don't pretend you didn't understand what I was asking of you right from the start. Shard it, you're more likely to get him killed than to see him win today. I can't hold her back, F'ren.”

“And I can't stop Thread from falling. Snowfall _needed_ us, Rahnis.” He was responsible for them now, more deeply than he'd ever have guessed possible, and honouring their loyalty with his own was the least he could do on their behalf. “I couldn't just abandon them.”

“Yes, and I'm trying hard not to fault you for it,” she said, looking briefly ashamed. “Perhaps it was the right choice, but you're paying for it now. And if I can admit that, you can sharding well do me the courtesy of doing the same. You can't win this one, F'ren, not in the state Trath's in right now.”

As if he wasn't well aware of that! “I know it won't be easy, but Trath and I both-”

“Will fly your hearts out for us, yes,” she said sardonically. “Alaireth told me. You may be arrogant and blind enough to think you're still in with a chance, but I'm not. Not _now_.”

F'ren felt numb. “You _have_ given up. Faranth, Rahnis, Trath needs every advantage I can give him, not to be burdened by your doubts! We certainly didn't need you making things easier for Sh'vek! Unless that's what you really wanted all along?”

She slapped him. “What _I_ want doesn't signify, not when one dragon clearly outclasses all the rest. _You_ were the one who taught me that lesson. Remember that, F'ren? What would you have me do? Blame Alaireth for being what she is, what every dragon is? All the greens Trath's flown over the turns: how many of _their_ riders would you choose for your bed, or would have you in theirs?”

“Green flights are different,” he muttered, rubbing at his sore cheek.

“Yes,” she hissed. “Green riders have the luxury of walking away from theirs. It's not the flight that's the problem, F'ren, it's everything that comes after it. Have you given any thought to what happens then, when the queens of all the other Weyrs on Pern are called in to enforce his judgement on us _both_?”

She reached up with both hands and gently took hold of his face. “Trust me, please F'ren, because I _have_ thought about it. Catching Alaireth isn't enough! This _isn't_ a battle you can win, not _now_.”

“And sending me away is better, is it? To _Vallenka's Ista_?” F'ren couldn't understand why she was being so unreasonable. She'd wanted him to time it, for Trath to be strong enough to win her queen...and now she wanted them to leave, before they'd even had the _chance_ to succeed or fail? “Why now? I've no intention of going anywhere, but we can leave afterwards just as easily as we can before. Claim sanctuary in Fort or Telgar or Be-”

“Really?” Sh'vek interjected. “On what grounds? Try it, F'ren, and _one_ of you will pay for Maenida and Kiath, I promise you that.”

“If you stay,” Rahnis said, her voice glacially cold and slow, “regardless of what happens today, you and Trath will only suffer. I will not see you get your dragon crippled through your own stupid refusal to admit defeat.”

“I'm not giving up on you, Rahnis.” He took her fingers in his own and brought them to his lips. “Never.”

Rahnis pulled away from him and turned back to the table. Sh'vek had righted the stool and sat down in the weyrwoman's place, and was busily spreading a thick layer of butter on a bread roll. F'ren tried to ignore the pangs of hunger coming from his stomach.

“Alaireth would like to swim, Weyrleader,” Rahnis said in a subdued tone. “I'd like some time alone with her, if you don't mind. That includes you, too, F'ren,” she added without looking round.

Sh'vek made a small motion of his hand towards her. “Go. It's probably for the best.”

She put on her coat without another word, persistently refusing to meet F'ren's eyes. He watched her add a hat and scarf, wishing he knew what was in her head, what had led her to this point. “Rahnis, please,” F'ren begged as she started towards the door.

“Goodbye, F'ren,” she said.

He got to the door before her and placed himself between it and her. “Is that all you have to say?”

She gave a heavy sigh and closed her eyes, head bowed. “Your transfer document is on the top of the stack. It and you had fardling both better be gone by the time I get back.”

Defeated, F'ren moved aside, and Rahnis left her weyr without a backwards glance. He followed her through Trath's eyes as she mounted up, then watched while the pair made their short flight to the lake, feeling a growing ache in his heart.

 _What do we do now?_ Trath asked.

 _I don't know._ Under Sh'vek's watchful eyes, F'ren walked to the weyrwoman's table and picked up the hide she'd indicated. There was an almost identical one on the pile right beneath it; F'ren wondered if C'nir knew about it yet. _Telemath's going to Fort, from the look of it_ , he told Trath. _But I'm certainly not submitting you to Carth's authority._

A turn ago, he'd have accepted this defeat with as much grace he could muster. He and Trath would have left for another Weyr, ready to start again from scratch. There was no reason why they couldn't serve Pern in Benden or Telgar equally as well as they could here in the north west; he'd surely have found himself leading a Wing again within a handful of turns at most; more, perhaps, once he'd lived there long enough for the Weyr to know him and Trath properly. He'd have left the High Reaches knowing that the Weyr was held in far more capable hands than Delene's; that victory alone was surely something to take pride in.

Even as little as a sevenday ago he might have made that choice. When she'd first arrived at the Weyr, Rahnis had been little more to him than a convenient means to an end, then simply the better woman for a difficult job. Later, she'd become an ally and a friend, a lover, and then increasingly more. Distance was no bar to a dragonrider, and although relationships between riders of different Weyrs were uncommon, even frowned upon, they weren't completely unheard of. Leaving the High Reaches wouldn't necessarily mean losing her...but it would mean leaving his Wing to face an uncertain future without him.

 _Do you wish to leave?_ Trath asked.

 _No. Not one bit._ The vehemence of his own thoughts surprised him. _This is our Weyr. This is where we belong. We have a Wing down there as well as a queen, and I'm not abandoning either one of them while I live and breathe. Rahnis is afraid for us, but I wish she'd had more faith. She isn't the only one who needs our victory today._

He folded the hide twice over, then methodically shredded it into small pieces with his belt knife.

Sh'vek raised an eyebrow in amusement, then shook his head. “Interesting choice, dragonrider.”

F'ren sheathed his knife, spurning the growing temptation to use it on something – someone – else. “I won't be swayed by threats.”

“No, you just don't like _losing_.” The Weyrleader brushed the breadcrumbs off his fingers. “I warned her you wouldn't leave, no matter how hard she tried to make you go. Not that it matters to me whether you leave or not, though I can't say I'm displeased. No-one need ever doubt that today's flight had any more than one sure outcome.”

“Ormaith won't fly Alaireth, Sh'vek. Rahnis won't allow it.” Not if he and Trath stayed.

“No? Well, Trath won't fly anything soon. Don't you think this is selfish of you, squandering my offer? Concessions like that don't come cheap.”

F'ren refused to let the man goad him. “No, they don't.” He smiled, grimly, then said, “Remember that, when you're paying for what you've done to her.”

Sh'vek laughed dismissively again, “I've done _nothing_. I turned her down, F'ren. Ormaith doesn't need any extra advantage, and she'd only have resented me for it.”

“You think I'm going to believe that?”

Sh'vek reached out for the canteen, and refilled his mug with some cold klah. “That she was willing to take such a step was more than good enough for me, especially when the rest will come soon enough.”

 _Calm yourself, F'ren!_ Trath sent urgently.

F'ren's vision dimmed, and he found himself turning back towards the door as Trath set his will firmly against his rider's fury. _All right, Trath, all right!_ he thought back, fighting down the urge to tear Sh'vek limb from limb. _I'm done here. Let's go._

Sh'vek wasn't finished with him. “She's _given up_ , F'ren,” the man called after him, taunting him. “And _you're_ the reason why.”

The words had an unwelcome ring of truth to them, but that didn't change any part of what F'ren knew he and Trath had to do. _We're going to ruin him, Trath. Today, if we can, but I swear on your shell, it doesn't end here if we can't._

_No. But today would be better, would it not?_

_Absolutely._ He jogged down the steps into the bowl and hauled himself up the side of his dragon's neck, gasping more from anger than exertion.

 _Where to?_ Trath asked as F'ren strapped himself in between the dragon's ridges.

_The rim, I think. Somewhere sunnier than our ledge._

Trath took his time selecting somewhere to land...though F'ren suspected it had as much to do with giving him a chance to cool down himself. The spot his dragon chose offered little in the way of comfort, being steeply sloped and rocky, and still cool from the shadows that had only recently been driven off by the sun. A stiff breeze blew up the side of the Weyr towards it; even on Trath's leeward side F'ren found himself wishing that his feet had claws. It did afford an excellent view of the Weyrbowl. Alaireth was wading through the shallow waters of the lake, gleaming in the sun almost as brightly as a gold could get.

 _You feel more like yourself again,_ the dragon said at last. _Though I think I'd feel better without my straps._

Embarrassed that he'd forgotten to see to his dragon's comfort, F'ren hastily unbuckled them and went to hang them over a convenient outcrop. _Sorry. How are you feeling now, Trath?_

The dragon heaved a sigh. His eyes were whirling a bright sea-green where the light caught them, but with unmistakable depths of mating red and the dark grey of deep exhaustion. _Better than when I woke. It won't be easy. Queens never are._

F'ren returned and settled himself down in the slight shelter of Trath's forelegs. _No, they're not. Who else should we watch out for, aside from Ormaith?_

_Telemath wants to win this flight very much. His rider is very angry with the Weyrleader. He does not wish to lose his rank to Goth's rider..._

_Ah, so_ that's _why Goth left with Linnebith!_

_...nor fly another fall like yesterday's, nor take our Wing on when the Weyrleader is done with us._

_And who's going to lead it in his place, eh? G'dil? J'garray?_ F'ren wasn't certain that C'nir even cared any more. _Keep an eye on him, but don't be too concerned. He may have more endurance than you, but Rahnis doesn't_ _think much_ _of him as a breeder. She won't let him catch them before we've had a chance of our own, not after what happened with Carth's clutch. What about Hieth? S'kloss is a good man; I wouldn't mind losing to him half as badly as Sh'vek._

 _We're not losing to anyone. Remember?_ Trath turned his head, scanning the bowl. _Hieth is tired, his rider does not seek to be Weyrleader, and he knows he can't match Ormaith. I think we're the only ones who can._

_Then that's what we'll have to do._

F'ren hunched closer to Trath's neck, avoiding the constant wind as well as he could, and watched the thin clouds scudding over the mountain tops off to the north. Several minutes later, he sensed his dragon's attention shifting away from the queen. _What is it?_

_Ruarnoth. She asks if there's room for her and her rider up here._

_Jealous of the attention you're giving Alaireth, is she?_

Trath snorted. _Greens don't compete with queens. I've told her she can join us; you're starting to get bored of waiting._

The green landed neatly on the same outcrop where F'ren had left his straps – it was the best spot left within several dragonlengths of Trath's own perch. H'koll had a tricky time dismounting, wincing at the pain from his broken ribs. “Why here, F'ren?”

“Updraughts,” the bronzerider answered. Most riders liked to have their dragons wait on the ground, as close to the queen as they could get, sacrificing height for proximity in the hope it would give them quicker reactions. F'ren knew Trath would need the former more than anything else, and he trusted his own instincts to get Trath airborne just as fast as any of the other bronzes, wherever he was in the Weyr. “Best spot in the whole Weyr. He'll be right back here after blooding, won't you?”

Trath rumbled affirmatively.

“Huh,” H'koll said. “Doesn't have much else going for it, does it?” Moving gingerly, he crossed the steeply sloping ground to where Trath was lying, and dropped a small bag into F'ren's lap. “Trath told Ru you were hungry. There's a couple of cold sausages in there, and one of Dannia's bubbly pies. She took pity on my black eye.”

“You scared her with it, more like. It looks even worse than it did the other day. Thanks for this.” F'ren loosened the cords holding the bag closed, and gratefully pulled out a sausage. “How're the ribs?” he asked between mouthfuls.

“Sore,” H'koll admitted. “I was expecting you to visit again. Rahnis said she hoped you would. It's probably a bit late for it now, but she wanted me to tell you to take things easy.”

“When was that?”

“Yesterday morning. She came by not long after you did, actually.”

F'ren groaned. “What else did she say?”

The greenrider's face grew sober. “Nothing more for you, but she did answer my questions. Why Kiath rose, and what happened afterwards. I've told R'fint what she told me, too. Don't give me that look! She didn't ask me to do it, but she didn't tell me not to, either, and I know he isn't happy with how Sh'vek is running things right now.”

“Is anyone?”

H'koll shrugged, then winced again. “Ow. Must remember not to do that. Why didn't you time it, F'ren?” He lowered his voice to a whisper that F'ren had to strain to hear. “Trath would be lucky to catch my Ru today, the way he looks.”

“Kiath,” F'ren said, setting the bag of food aside. “Trath won't do it. It's not the same as going _betwee_ n places; we can't go far enough back without passing Kiath on the way, and she'll always be there, dying. I'm not sure if we'll ever time it again.”

“Maybe it's best if you don't. R'fint says nothing good has ever come of timing it. Shells, I don't know what to think; I didn't even know it was possible until Rahnis told me.”

“She'll be Weyrwoman because of it. That's one good thing, isn't it?”

“For the Weyr, maybe. For her?” The greenrider gave F'ren a knowing look. “I'm not so sure.”

“Shard it, H'koll. I _can't_ let him win this.”

“I know.”

“And I don't think I can stop it happening. Not alone.”

H'koll reached across and gave him a comradely thump on the shoulder. “Good thing it's not just down to you, then, isn't it? She's got a plan, F'ren. And I gave her a few tips, things Ru does when she rises that might help Trath out.”

“Had, H'koll, had,” F'ren muttered, scratching his stubble in annoyance. “She _had_ a plan. Whatever it was, she abandoned it overnight. She doesn't think Trath is fit enough. She wanted us to leave the Weyr.”

“It doesn't have to...” H'koll trailed off and shook his head. “Oh, what does she know about what your bronze is capable of anyway? If I had a mark for every time he's got between me and a rider who actually _likes_ men in his bed....”

F'ren gave the green rider a sick smile. “Sorry.”

H'koll chuckled. “What for? It's not our dragons' good taste that's at fault. You know I wouldn't turn you away; it's getting you to stay put long enough that's the problem.” He tossed his head in Alaireth's direction. “Any idea if she's the jealous type? Knowing my luck, the next dragon Ru besots herself with will be just as bad.”

“Pellenth's never shown an interest, has he?” F'ren teased.

“Faranth!” H'koll shot his dragon a sharp look; F'ren didn't need to overhear to guess what the man was saying. “No,” the greenrider continued, “M'arsen's too far up his own arse to be interested in anyone else's.”

F'ren might have laughed, had his mirth not been suddenly drained by Trath's demands on his attention

 _Roflith,_ the bronze said. _Look._

Down in the bowl, a large dragon had launched himself from one of the weyrs on the west face, screaming at the top of his lungs. Trath hissed in annoyance; although the dragon didn't give voice to his own challenge, F'ren could already feel the strength of it, the imperative needs provoking it. A few seconds later, another bronze joined Roflith in the air and sped to the feeding grounds ahead of him. Mumvath was so eager that he didn't even let P'vash dismount before making his kill.

“F'ren?”

H'koll followed his name with a question that F'ren didn't quite catch. “Not long now,” he murmured. More dragons had followed Roflith and Mumvath: Danth, Luth, Benth and H'rack's Simpeth. Even at that distance F'ren could recognise the slight hitch to the dragon's flight caused by the previous day's wing-scoring; Simpeth wouldn't last the distance. _How much longer did you want to wait?_ he asked.

Trath barely gave the question any thought at all. _I don't_.

Words were already becoming redundant as the strength of the dragon's purpose intensified. F'ren got to his feet and mounted as swiftly as he could; Trath was airborne again almost before he'd got his leg between the last of the dragon's neck ridges. The bronze descended lazily towards the Weyr lake, his flight little more than a glide; the last few dragonlengths were barely high enough to keep his forestay tips from touching the puddled ground on the down strokes.

Alaireth was preening in the shallows at the lake's edge, giving every impression of being utterly disinterested in the bronzes swarming the Weyr's sky. The queen's swim had washed every last vestige of concealing dirt from her hide and there was no longer any mistaking her condition. Trath beat his wings harder, rising into a circling flight above the dark waters of the lake and the fractured reflections it offered up, blending gold and bronze together.

Above the feeding grounds, the air was more crowded: Hieth and Kanleth were jostling for room with all the rest, as was Drunuth, who'd unsurprisingly decided to abandon his Watch. Trath backwinged to land beside the herdbeast's enclosure, and was in the air again as soon as F'ren's feet touched the ground. Rahnis was standing by the wall a few lengths away, Sh'vek at her side, both concentrating their attention on the bronzes already blooding. The sight was infuriating.

 _She's mine, not his!_ F'ren swallowed his outrage down and joined the other men heading their way. Sh'vek would surely drive the queen into a hard flight, forcing her to fly as fast and erratically as possible. The first dragon to try to claim her would have to fight past the pack on top of mastering Alaireth's own manoeuvres, and he couldn't afford to let that dragon be Trath. The bronze had no energy to spare for fanciful acrobatics, or indeed anything more than the simplest of turns. They'd need to be efficient, maximising their use of the air around them, their knowledge of the skies and the local terrain. Let the others spend their strength on futile exertions; Ormaith aside, F'ren wouldn't waste Trath's effort interfering with any of them. As for Ormaith and Sh'vek, F'ren was sure that Alaireth wouldn't let them close until she had no other options left to her. If he and Trath were going to have any chance at all, Rahnis would need to steady her queen's pace, turning her back in her tracks and making full use of altitude. The timing would be crucial: to see and seize the moment when the queen's aerobatics turned in his favour, assuming it came before their endurance failed.

 _It will,_ Trath insisted. _Alaireth is only pretending not to watch us, and Rahnis watches with her. She says we're brave fools. I agreed._

F'ren felt the dragon's concentration shift back to the stampeding beasts beneath him. _Careful now,_ he thought, keen to keep his dragon from overdoing things unnecessarily in an attempt to impress the queen. He'd seen more than a few bronzes come unstuck even before their queen rose.

He needn't have worried; Trath's kill was as precise as ever, belying his fears, and the dragon needed no persuasion to go straight for the beast's throat. F'ren was momentarily jolted by unwanted memories, but Trath held him steady, forcibly sharing his own burgeoning hunger and lust in full. The presence of other men and dragons all around them both rapidly faded to only the dimmest awareness, replaced by heat and strength and potency. Trath despatched and drained a second beast, then a third, then launched himself back towards the rim. F'ren's heart soared with him, ignoring the pathetic beasts still blooding beneath them, weak and wretched. There was blood and fire in his belly and his loins; today, he would fly and seize and mate his queen in triumph! As he alighted on the ridge, Trath added his own roar to the growing chorus. _See me!_ it said, and _Am I not worthy of you?_ and _None can match me!_

All eyes and minds were on the queen, now. She hadn't moved from her spot at the Lake's edge, but her disinterested mien had evolved: the bored contempt was fading fast, replaced by the same sensual self-assurance that F'ren had sensed from her earlier, now being broadcast Weyr-wide. Every once in a while one of her suitors' challenges would provoke a reaction of her own: sometimes mockery and dismissal, and at others a flattered delight, but always accompanied by the same determined insistence that _she_ would be the one to judge their worth.

 _Yes!_ he and Trath declared, bellowing down from the heights.

 _But a queen may mate with many bronzes,_ Alaireth answered him. _Just because I deemed you adequate once before is no reason that you shouldn't prove yourself once again. And you, Ormaith. Tell me again! Tell me...._

The queen's focus shifted away from Trath, and F'ren's awareness of what she was saying abruptly vanished. A jealous rage was boiling up inside him; F'ren looked around for Sh'vek, half ready to do whatever it took to put the man out of the running right away. Only then did he notice the hand resting on his arm and the dark eyes looking up at him. “Rahnis!”

His mouth went dry, and his dragon's shared arousal was abruptly drowned out by his own. She seized his head and started kissing him fiercely, but pulled back again before he could take charge and prove his own passion for her. The limits of his self-control were being sorely stretched; F'ren ground the heel of his boot onto the opposite toe, distracting himself with the discomfort. “We couldn't go,” he whispered. “Promise me, Rahnis...”

“No,” she breathed, before he could finish. “No promises. No empty words.” She looked around, and smiled alluringly at the other men surrounding them both. Sh'vek had a half-snarl on his lips and looked utterly furious with himself at having been so easily gulled by Alaireth's flirtation. “Only actions matter now. It's too late for words.”

F'ren's arms fell loosely to his sides as she strode away, her steps shadowing her queen's flight as Alaireth flew overhead. Sh'vek was first to follow, but F'ren didn't bother to try getting too close. Instead, he waited until she stopped walking then found a spot on the wall a little way ahead of her, where he could see her clearly. Rahnis was biting her lower lip, concentrating on her queen as she made her kills. She grew more flushed with each successive one, mirroring the brightening hue of the queen. Ignoring the queen, ignoring the other men clustered tightly around her, F'ren watched her face, waiting for the moment when the queen's imperative need finally coincided with her own. Trath was ready, he was ready, and they were in the air faster than any other bronze when Alaireth leapt into the sky.

Everything was effortless at first. The taste of blood was fresh in his mouth, re-ignited by the cold air and the exertions of flight. The rim had been the right choice, too; Trath spanned the distance well before the other bronzes could match the queen's ascent. Each down-stroke of his powerful wings brought Alaireth fractionally closer, especially once she stopped climbing so steeply and he could start to reap the benefits of her slipstream. That didn't last long, of course – she was a queen, and no queen would allow herself to be used like that, not at a time such as this. She pulled away strongly, Rahnis tearing her hands free from his. Instinct forced him not to try to match her pace, not so soon as this. All the same, after Alaireth herself, Trath was first of the bronzes to find his way into the nearest of the series of thermals that led westwards from the Weyr. He could sense rather than see the other dragons following in close pursuit behind, jostling for position in a hungry turbulence of flailing wings. Another part of him was equally conscious of their riders, stumbling across the Weyrbowl alongside him like a mob of flocking wherries, Rahnis somewhere in their midst.

None of them mattered, only her.

She was golden fire filling his vision, a flaming sun ascendant in the sky. Snow-capped mountains and thunderous rivers of meltwater fell away behind her; off to the south, the nearest of the local Holds appeared on the horizon, grew, then diminished once again as the queen shifted in her course. Straight she flew, strong and true, doing only enough to maintain her lead while teasing out the pursuit like an unwinding skein of wool. Her weyr was dark after the brightness of the sky outside, but few let their blindness distract them. Boots were kicked free and clothes were abandoned as she led them on and in, permitting a favoured, lucky few close enough to touch her, inflaming them into even more determined pursuit. This was the simplest test, the first: to weed out those with no strength or will to follow.

It was almost easy.

She shone, so, so bright, filling him with energy and desire. He hungered for her, ached with the need to seize her from the sky and make her his. It was tempting, oh, so tempting, to try to claim her as his right now. It wouldn't take much – just everything he had – but that would be more than worth it to win her. Too soon, though, it was far too soon. He'd have one chance at this, while she....

A loud bellow sounded from behind. Panic filled him momentarily until he recognised the bronze barrelling past. Pryanth, J'garray's bronze. Fast as he was, Pryanth obviously lacked either the wits or the self-control necessary to resist the desperation of his lust. Trath dipped a wing and sidled sideways through the air, giving the beast plenty of room in which to make his mistakes, and ascended a few dragonlengths higher, pointedly ignoring the smaller bronze and the handful of others trailing in his wake. Giving chase now would mean failure, not victory. Alaireth was golden fire, her reserves of strength as yet untapped, and she'd surely be utterly contemptuous of anyone who wouldn't even attempt to match her stamina. Keeping pace from a safe distance, he watched her dive and spiral and ascend again, twisting like a green in the air and leaving her suitors hopeless and broken. They fluttered limply away; he roared in pleasure at their defeat.

She didn't want them: not Pryanth, not Mumvath or Luth, not any of them. She never did. She filled his heart and lungs with fire, she was a blazing beacon rising through the air, and he'd follow her until his strength gave out.

Onwards Alaireth flew, the sun always at her back. The peaks of the Weyr and the Western Range had fallen away behind her, the land beneath indistinct and half-shrouded by clouds. She'd chosen to keep climbing – he hadn't expected that – and the dragons' altitude was high enough now that the blue of the horizon far to the west now bled seamlessly into the sea. Flight was harder, here in the thinner upper reaches of the air, and he knew he was losing his advantage with every extra dragonlength she climbed. There were other bronzes in the air around him, veteran victors like Telemath and Ormaith, as well as other bronzes both younger and older, all now equally well placed to make their challenge for her. High above, he saw her change the angle of her wings as Ormaith closed in on her, diving to elude him. Ormaith wouldn't win her like that: he'd have to out-fly every other dragon in the air before she'd ever deign to be his. Ormaith could do it – would do it, he knew, if given the chance – but he wasn't prepared to let _this_ flight come to that. He might have only the one chance to win her, but it would come well before then.

Above the hills of the High Reaches, the chaos of the pursuit had settled into a rhythm of its own. The long ascent had done its work; willpower alone was all that had kept him flying this far. There were fewer of them left, now. Ormaith was flying at his wingtip, a shadow he'd have preferred not to have. Alaireth herself was no longer quite so far ahead. She was close, tantalisingly so. He could almost reach out and touch her, wanted desperately to do so. Did so. Her flight had become more playful now, more teasing. Altitude was abandoned in favour of long, swooping dives and curves, in which she dared them all to turn harder, dive steeper, to cease following and to start to make choices of their own. One after another, other dragons struggled forwards from the pack, took their chances, and failed. Back at the Weyr, the occasional brush of her body against his sent his barely controlled lust surging into an overwhelming need. She wanted him, if he could win her. If, if. The time had finally come, time to win this flight and make her his.

His heart and lungs were on fire; every last part of him was aflame and burning. He closed in on her rapidly, saving nothing in reserve, trusting in his instincts to match her coy twists and evasions. She was fire in his arms, at his mouth, deep within his heart and loins. Each and every wingstroke fanned the flames of his lust further, added to the crippling agony of the flight, but it no longer mattered. There wasn't much left now, no distance at all. Their shadows were already one, racing entwined across the cloudscape, and all he needed were a few more seconds, that was all, that was all that he needed, even with Ormaith right behind him now, and closing the distance fast, fast, fast.

Alaireth banked hard and he matched her, knowing that her next move would make her his. Twisting in the air, he knew that she saw him and judged him worthy. She saw them both. Felt them both, too; his lips weren't the only pair pressed hard against her flesh. A lesser queen might have paused in indecision at that point, might still have thought the choice was hers to make.

It wasn't.

Not then, not there, not with Ormaith closing on her just as fast as he was.

A few seconds, that was all he'd needed. Without that, she was still too far, just marginally too far...and he wouldn't ever have been the one to reach her first.

And then she was gone, blazing back through the scattered remnants of her suitors, reclaiming the endgame for herself, and whichever bronze could ultimately match her.

It wouldn't be long now, he knew, watching them dwindle into the distance as he gasped helplessly for air.

 

 

 

 

F'ren gasped for air, but it made no difference at all. Trath was spent, his heart in ashes. It didn't matter that he wasn't the first to leave, that the room was emptying fast now. Clothes and dignity, those would come first, and then however much alcohol it would take to numb his senses. It wouldn't be enough, he didn't have _time_ to make it enough, and he knew he was going to feel it all when it happened. Reaching the doorway, he paused to take one last look behind him. S'kloss and H'rack were also out of contention now from the looks of it. He'd hoped that one of them might have had a chance, if he failed. C'nir was still there, and Sh'vek of course, along with a couple of others who lacked the experience to know that they were already beaten. C'nir turned away from Rahnis then, human awareness returning to his eyes. Telemath's chances had been no better or worse than Trath's own, than any other dragon except....

F'ren left her weyr, hurrying past the queen's couch and down the steps from the ledge as quickly as he could. Only one dragon had ever had a real chance today. He squeezed his eyes shut as he stumbled onto the floor of the bowl, willing his memory blind. Someone thrust a shapeless object into his arms; it sloshed as he moved, already half empty. He raised the skin to his lips and took a deep swig, almost choking on the searing strength of the liquor inside. Not wine, then. He swallowed another mouthful quickly, then a third, wishing it was fellis. It burned its way down to his belly. F'ren laughed. All the way down, let it burn him out, burn the world away, finish him off fierce and fast...preferably before Alaireth did.

He'd seen Sh'vek reaching for her, taking hold and pulling her close. F'ren sank to the ground and swallowed again. He could still feel her, he couldn't help it. He'd feel _this_ if he were twenty turns dead. He raised the skin to his lips as sensation rose and overflowed, focusing on the fire in his mouth, trying to pretend that the mind-searing passion of the queen and her mate wasn't happening at all.

It was over.

Everything was over, now.

 

 

**END OF PART 4**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...um...if you need me for anything, I'll be hiding out in my bunker.
> 
> Next update will be relatively soon. Just ask if you want me to elaborate on Rahnis' choices/decision making process before the flight.


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep reading. Just...keep reading.

_When a gold or green does rise,_   
_taking, shining, to the skies,_   
_bronze and brown and blue will chase_   
_'til the best does win the race._   
_When a gold or green does rise,_   
_she it is who will decide._   
_When a gold or green does rise,_   
_riders by her will abide._

**  
Late Morning, 16.3.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

  
Slowly, oh so slowly, the overload of sensation receded. Alaireth had separated from her mate, and the two dragons were now gliding sedately down towards a sun-lit patch of moorland. They'd sleep soon, Rahnis knew, for as long as the sunlight lasted, before heading back to the Weyr at dusk.

Eyes still tightly closed against her tears, she felt her body spasm again; this time a purely human reaction. She clutched at the Weyrleader's back as he shifted above her, heard him gasp at the pain her nails caused him, then felt his lips upon her own again. The last vestiges of her own desire deserted her. She doubted anything more would come of it – they were utterly spent, both of them – but if she let him continue, chances were he'd follow his dragon into slumber soon enough, and so would she. The simplest choice, that, to accept the oblivion of sleep that her aching body and mind desperately yearned for, but she knew it was a luxury that she – and the Weyr – could ill afford.

She twisted her face away from his. “No.” There was a catch in her voice that she couldn't conceal, and the weight of his body instantly left her as he rolled aside.

“Weyrwoman? Did I hurt you?”

Blinking, she rubbed at her eyes. Had he? A little, perhaps, but with a flight the pleasure was always so intense that it was often hard to tell. “No,” she said again, not caring if it was truth or not.

“You're crying.”

A hand brushed at her cheek, and she brought up one of her own, and held him there for a moment, relishing the small act of caring he'd shown towards her. It wasn't an action she'd ever have expected from Sh'vek, but today seemed to be a day for unlikely events.

After Trath had dropped away, Rahnis had lost herself in her queen's needs, leading the handful of bronzes remaining on as difficult a flight as they'd dared. Ormaith had matched Alaireth strength for strength in spite of everything they'd tried, predicting her moves with appalling accuracy. Alaireth had allowed him to draw dangerously close several times during the flight, hoping to provoke an error from him, before darting back through the pack of pursuers. It didn't work: Ormaith was always there, Sh'vek's breath close on her neck, his hands moving possessively across her skin. She'd hated how much the constant presence of man and dragon had excited her. The other bronzes she'd hoped might catch them had all failed, one after another, ruined by the dizzying pace set by their queen. Ormaith would not fail. Ormaith was power and endurance and cunning. And Ormaith would claim her, eventually, whether she chose him or not; just as Sh'vek had promised.

The broad gyre of her thermalling flight had shown her the truth all too clearly. There were still a handful of dragons left in the chase, mostly younger beasts whose speed and stamina made up for their lack of experience, but they were widely scattered now. Drunuth and Corhoth were distant specks half way back to the horizon. Danth, struggling for altitude outside the thermal, was closest after Ormaith, but he was showing clear signs of injury from his near collision with his clutchmate, who was nowhere in sight and had presumably dropped out while she wasn't watching. Telemath, Benth and Roflith were the last remaining bronzes, circling weakly a good ten lengths beneath Ormaith and fractionally more beneath herself. Folding her wings tight to her sides, she plunged back down again towards the stragglers, but even that tactic failed her. Ormaith, bellowing triumphantly, easily found sufficient reserves to power his spiralling path down and ahead of her, forcing her to choose between letting him catch her then and there, or to change course once again.

Knowing it was the last time she'd do so, she'd chosen not to be caught. Alaireth had pushed herself into one final ascent, but it had been a very near thing. Avoiding Ormaith had meant losing the advantage of the thermal, too, and she'd known it wouldn't be long before the distance between them closed. Behind her, she'd heard Ormaith bellow again, felt Sh'vek's fingers biting hard into her arm, more than ready to catch and claim her. She'd twisted, coyly, sensing the proximity of the pursuit, filled by an ever-rising surge of desire and admiration. How cunning they were, to hide in the sun like that. How strong, how _fast_!

The memory brought a smile to her lips and a sense of relief and release that lifted her spirits skywards. Rahnis let her tears flow. _We_ did _choose well, Alaireth._

_I know._

“Weyrwoman? Are you sure you're all right?”

She opened her eyes to look at her Weyrleader. At O'reb, Mannifeth's rider, whose dragon hadn't come off worst in his encounter with S'ferro's Danth after all. Faranth, weren't they meant to be off somewhere in Benden helping R'fint with the Weyrlings? How had they managed it? Neither one had been present at the Weyr at the start of the flight, but she was very, _very_ glad that they'd been there at its end, fresh and fit in the air beside them at the perfect time, giving Alaireth and herself the choice they'd almost lost hope of having.

Rahnis squeezed the young man's hand, turning her head to kiss his palm. “I'm fine, truly. Just a little emotional. You're not who I was expecting.”

“Is that...”

“Good,” she answered quickly, trying to dispel the doubt in his eyes. “It's good, I think. But you should start getting dressed. After that...there's a lot we need to discuss.”

A brief flicker of disappointment crossed O'reb's face, then he nodded. Rahnis swung her legs over the edge of the bed, and slowly stood up. Abandoning the clothes she'd been wearing earlier, she went to her clothes chest and put on fresh underclothes, shirt and trousers, and her smartest felted over-vest. Deep inside another drawer, Rahnis located the small leather case containing the knots she'd made up ready for this eventuality several sevendays earlier. She pulled it out and slipped it unopened into her pocket. Tradition dictated that Alaireth's rising made her Senior Weyrwoman and O'reb the High Reaches' new Weyrleader, but tradition wouldn't uphold itself and she was under no illusions at all that the usual transfer of power could be taken for granted. Sh'vek would do everything he could to stop it, that she could depend on. She'd given him ample stone to flame her with, and he was bound to make his move the instant Ormaith returned to the Weyr; she needed to have everything in motion well before then if she was to have any chance of success. Whether her current position would afford her enough leverage to save herself and her queen was still an open question...but, slim as their chances were, this opportunity was likely the only one they'd have. She'd hoped to have F'ren beside her when it came to this, but that hadn't proved possible. All she could do now was work with what she had.

When she turned around, O'reb was sat down lacing up his boots, his wherhide jacket slung on the back of the chair beside him. O'reb would certainly make the youngest Weyrleader she'd ever read of, at least as far back as the records reliably went, but going by what little she knew of him, he wouldn't be the worst by a very wide margin. He wasn't Sh'vek; that was already one point in his favour. He might even make a good Weyrleader eventually, in spite of his inexperience...if he was given a fair chance to become one. If it was fair on _anyone_ to even ask him to try.

A Weyr was a heavy responsibility even without the added burden of her own problems; that was true no matter how much experience you had. How much worse would it be for a young man whose authority could be so easily undermined? No, O'reb needed to know the full truth of what he was facing. If he didn't think himself up to the task, she certainly couldn't force him into the role. In that case, the only right choice would be to step aside in favour of Delene and Linnebith and whichever bronze won _her_ flight. Under those circumstances, it wouldn't matter whether Ormaith caught Linnebith or not: all outcomes would be almost equally disastrous as far as Rahnis was concerned. Stripped of her current seniority, she'd have lost her only real means of fighting back...and Sh'vek had been very clear about what it would mean for her and her queen.

Rahnis hoped it wouldn't come to that, but she couldn't make O'reb's choices for him. She lifted her chin and took a deep breath. Whatever he decided, delaying would only worsen matters further. “Weyrleader?''

O'reb slowly raised his head. “Am I?”

It was a surprisingly pertinent question.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short, but sweet. There'll be more on Wednesday or Thursday.


	41. Chapter 41

_Set your dreams aside._  
 _Let them slide away in silence_  
 _as you stand to face your fears._  
 _Let them fall behind your footsteps_  
 _as you journey through your days._  
 _Let them scatter like the stars above,_  
 _like seeds upon the ground,_  
 _and keep dreaming, ever dreaming,_  
 _until all your hopes are found._

 

**Late morning, 16.3.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

 

F'ren braced himself against the wall and decided to try lifting his head.

It was a singularly bad idea. The walls had finally stopped spinning, but a gang of weyrlings breaking firestone appeared to have taken up residence inside his skull. He doubled over helplessly and retched into the bucket, but there was very little left to bring up.

Groaning, he hauled himself upright again, and groped for the basin of water on top of the washstand. Scooping out a handful, he splashed it in the vague direction of his face. His second attempt worked a little better than the first; this time, he actually managed to swallow some of it down. If he was lucky, he decided, some of it might even stay where it was. If he was even luckier, C'nir might _not._

“Come on, F'ren,” C'nir said again. “The Weyrleader wants you.”

F'ren had thought that that had been what C'nir had said the first time, but he'd no intention of seeing anyone, least of all Sh'vek, looking and feeling the way he was. “He can fardling well wait until I'm done vomiting, can't he?” he croaked, leaning on the washstand for support. He didn't think he was ready to hold himself up without it yet.

C'nir walked over and inspected F'ren's bucket. “Looks like you're done to me. How much did you have?”

“Not nearly enough.”

“I know, man. I know.” C'nir picked up the bucket and tipped its contents down the nearest drain, then kicked it back across the floor towards F'ren's feet. “Try a woman, next time.”

F'ren almost wished he had; he'd done so often enough in the past. Trath had lost gold flights before – Faranth, he'd only ever won the one of them – but this time, it was different. Today, even the thought of indulging himself in the second hand pleasures of the victors had only heightened his despair. Hard alcohol was the usual alternative, but that hadn't done much to numb his senses. Trath had done what he could to shield him from it, clamping down on his own awareness of the flight's conclusions, but there'd been no hiding from Alaireth's ecstasy. If he'd been willing to pull his mind further away from Trath's, once the dragon had given up and he'd come back to himself, he might not have felt her so strongly...but doing that would have been even more abhorrent than finding a willing woman. The alcohol alone had been bad enough. No dragon liked it when their rider got into such a state.

 _So long as you don't make a habit of it,_ Trath said.

F'ren closed his eyes, and reached for his bronze. It was the first coherent thought he'd had from his dragon since he'd fled Alaireth's weyr. _Where are you?_

Trath shared a view of the Weyr's spindles from the west, about half an hour's flying time away at the slow and laboured pace the dragon was making. F'ren could sense how exhausted Trath was, both in body and mind, his ego badly bruised. He'd recover, soon enough...and all too late, too fardling late!

Leaning hard on the washstand, F'ren let out a heavy sigh; C'nir, the malicious bastard, took it as his cue to pester him again.

“Can you walk?”

F'ren bowed his head and closed his eyes. “Fuck off, C'nir,” he muttered. “And while you're at it, you can tell Sh'vek the same. I can't do this now.”

C'nir didn't leave. “Yes, you can. Here, take my arm.” The man held out his hand, an amused expression on his face. “Or would you prefer it if I had you dragged in like a criminal?”

F'ren scowled at him, and pushed the offered assistance away. He reached for the jug instead, and clumsily poured more water into the basin. Some of it went where he'd meant it to; he followed it with his head, hoping that the cold water would drive out at least _some_ of the weyrlings-with-hammers _._ The dull ache in his brain intensified as soon as his face hit the water, but at least the cold shock of it seemed to have eased some of the pounding. He straightened up slightly, raising his dripping face out from the basin, and turned his head to look at C'nir. “You're not going to go away, are you?”

C'nir grinned down at him. “No. You're coming with me whether you like it or not, F'ren.”

There was no reason the man had to sound so _happy_ about it! “Do you even know what he wants?” he snapped. “Shard it, I should've done as she asked. Should've left when we still had the chance.”

“Should I send for a drudge with a wheelbarrow, maybe?”

 _That_ would only add insult to injury...but C'nir rarely made idle threats. Cursing C'nir as creatively as he could manage in his hungover state, F'ren cautiously straightened up and let go of the washstand. Nothing felt right – his head was now cold, wet and pounding rather than pounding alone, his vision was off, and he wasn't planning on even _thinking_ about eating or drinking for the foreseeable future – but it seemed his body _was_ done with purging itself, at least for the moment. He slicked his dripping hair back from his forehead, then waved his hand out to the side. “Left my coat somewhere over there. Least you can do is fetch it for me.”

C'nir graciously did as he'd been asked. F'ren slipped his arms into the coat, and started on the buttons. There seemed to be several too many of them for the number of holes today; F'ren undid the lot, and decided not to bother trying again.

“Ready?”

F'ren nodded at the bronzerider.

“ _Can_ you walk?” C'nir asked again.

There was only one way to find out. Feeling sick with dread, F'ren took a deep breath and turned for the door.

 

 

 

Walking wasn't so bad, at first. The passageways were quiet, and the conversations of the few small groups lingering in the main cavern seemed unusually subdued. Out in the bowl, a stiff breeze quickly swept away the last stink of the kitchens; it had a harder time with the acridity that still clung to his own body, but the fresh air was balm to his lungs and head. And then, he was standing at the foot of the steps that led up to Alaireth's empty ledge. F'ren paused, reluctant to proceed. Trath was still some way off, and far too exhausted for much in the way of clear thoughts.

“C'mon, F'ren. Best get it over and done with, eh?”

Clinging to the last shreds of his dignity, F'ren started up the steps, each riser seeming larger than the last. He wanted to stop again when he reached the top, but by then C'nir had a hand pressed into his back, forcing him onwards. He looked back over his shoulder at C'nir; the man was still wearing the same malicious grin as earlier. “You don't need to do that,” F'ren told him. “I'm hardly going to lose my way, am I?”

C'nir shrugged and lowered his arm. “Just keep walking, F'ren.”

Inside, the queen's weyr was dark, lit weakly by the light gleaming through the half-closed door that led to the inner rooms. He pushed the door open and walked reluctantly inside, looking around for Sh'vek. There was Rahnis, standing beside the table, smiling sadly at him. O'reb was next to her; Faranth only knew what _he_ was doing there. Sh'vek wasn't anywhere at all, unless he was hiding under her bedfurs or having a bath or....

F'ren's mind abruptly caught up with the details of what he'd seen but hadn't properly noticed. Faranth's _Egg,_ those weren't a wingrider's knots O'reb was wearing! Two full loops of woven bronze and dark blue, topped by a Weyrleader's ring and tassels....

“That's.... You....” He closed his gaping mouth and looked across to Rahnis. “Truly?”

She blinked. “C'nir didn't _tell_ you?”

Beside him, C'nir burst into a fit of chuckles. F'ren spun round and the other bronzerider sidled quickly away, hands raised defensively. “Your face, man!”

“C'nir!” Rahnis snapped disapprovingly.

“You fardling, flaming, _tunnelsnake!_ ” F'ren didn't know whether to swing a fist at him or laugh with him. Relief was welling up hard inside him, and if he didn't do one or the other he'd probably end up weeping. _Trath, oh Trath, why didn't you tell me? It wasn't Ormaith at all!_

_It wasn't? Is that good?_

_Of course it's good!_ He turned back towards Rahnis and started towards her, both arms outstretched to welcome her back into his embrace. _It's...._

F'ren stopped, mid-thought, and let his arms drop to his sides. Rahnis hadn't moved from the young man's side; it made a strange inversion of how he'd seen her earlier, with Sh'vek. A different man, a different future...but, with a sense of pessimistic doom he knew he couldn't entirely blame on alcohol poisoning, he feared his own place in it was just as far from her side. “It's over, isn't it?”

No further elaboration was necessary. Rahnis nodded. “It has to be, F'ren. Sh'vek won't go easily, and if we can't offer the Weyr a better alternative we'll have lost before we've even started.”

As much as he hated to admit it, he could already see that Rahnis was right. F'ren let the air out of his lungs in a long, slow breath; the thumping in his head now seemed a trivial, passing thing. Under other circumstances, discretion might have been enough, but if any Weyrleader needed the advantage of his Weyrwoman's clear support, O'reb surely did. Nothing he could say or do would change the fact that, for a time at least, the emotional ties between them would have to be severed. How they felt about each other didn't matter; the Weyr's needs would and should take precedence.

 _No,_ F'ren thought quickly to his dragon. Exhausted as he was, Trath had stayed in close rapport with his rider, supporting F'ren as much as he could. Now, feelings of contrition and inadequacy were coming to the fore. _Don't you even_ think _about apologising. You flew better than I ever imagined any_ _dragon could, earlier,_ _and you'll always, always be the only one I need. Life doesn't always go exactly the way we want, that's all._ It hadn't gone the way anyone had expected, today. “Where _is_ Sh'vek, Rahnis?” he asked.

“With Ormaith, on the high ground above River Bend Hold,” she said, sounding almost completely unconcerned. “M'arsen flew him out that way, H'koll says. I've set a watch on them, but we won't have much warning when he decides to head back here.”

F'ren felt sick again. “Rahnis, he _told_ me what he'd do. Tradition be damned, he's going to fight you on this, and he's going to use every weapon he has! Ormaith doesn't need to be here to bespeak Pern's queens. You said it yourself; he'll have every last one of them enforcing his will on us, if we give him half a chance. And what about O'reb? Does he know about _any_ of this yet? He'll fall just as hard as the rest of us unless we do something, stop Sh'vek talking before-”

“It's already done, F'ren,” Rahnis interjected. “Alaireth has had word from Holshayth and Ondarth, and if he's spoken to Fort and Telgar already we can assume the same of the rest. They'll be here tomorrow at dawn. And yes, O'reb does know what we're facing. Not everything, but I think we covered the worst of it. What Sh'vek did, what I mean to do, and what the possible outcomes are for us all, and the Weyr. I'm honoured by his trust, frankly.”

“H'koll said you had a plan?” he asked, hopefully.

Rahnis smiled. “Later,” she promised. “The Weyrleader has something to ask of you first.”

On the surface, O'reb was very little changed from the day when F'ren had called upon him and the other Weyrlings to assist Flamestrike: a young man of not quite twenty turns with curly pale brown hair and open, honest features – earnest, some would say. Almost half a turn flying in the fighting Wings had bulked out his frame a little and rid him of some of his insouciance; a turn or ten more might make a decent Wingsecond or even a Wingleader out of him. But a Weyrleader? Shells, but the lad was out of his depth! Sh'vek would flame him to char, given half the chance.

F'ren decided then and there that he wasn't going to let that happen. He lifted his hand and gave O'reb a crisp salute. “Weyrleader. How may I serve your Weyr?”

O'reb looked visibly relieved by F'ren's offer. He pointed at the chair opposite him. “Please, sit down. You, too, C'nir.”

F'ren did as he'd been asked. O'reb waited until C'nir was also seated, then said, “I've already asked C'nir if he'll be one of my seconds. If you'll agree to it, I want you for another.”

F'ren couldn't help giving Rahnis a brief glance; he wondered if this had been her idea. “Why me? Why not S'kloss?”

The young Weyrleader held his gaze. “S'kloss was my first Wingleader; everyone knows that. I hope he'll support me as Weyrleader, but if I make him my second or take on his Wing, my own credibility won't stretch any further than Windfire.”

“You'd be lucky if you got that much,” C'nir said.

“You'll be lucky if you get any at all,” F'ren added. All things considered, the young man was managing himself creditably well, but.... “The Weyr won't follow your lead in Fall just because you wear a Weyrleader's knots, not at the age you are. What do you mean to do about that?”

O'reb frowned. “I know. I know I won't be much more than a figurehead at first, I know it'll be my seconds leading the Weyr, here and in threadfall...and I know I need men the Weyr will trust. C'nir most of all. You understand why, don't you?”

F'ren did. “I do. It's a commonly used trick, taking on one of your predecessor's seconds. What're your reasons for it, Weyrleader?”

“You sound like R'fint. Testing me, aren't you?”

F'ren fully expected he'd be having several very long discussions with the Weyrlingmaster in the near future – H'koll and R'fint between them were almost certainly responsible for Mannifeth's timely addition to the pack of bronzes chasing Alaireth – but he hoped O'reb wouldn't ever make the same comparison publicly. Faranth knew, the Weyr didn't need any more reminders of how recently O'reb's Weyrling class had graduated to the Wings. Adding another layer to what the young man had already seen, F'ren let disdain colour his voice. “Is that a problem?”

“Will you make it one?” O'reb snapped back at him. “I _want_ you to test me; I know I need it. But I won't be undermined by you. Is that understood?”

F'ren lowered his head in silent acknowledgement, trying not to smile.

“Good,” O'reb continued. “To answer your question, the Weyr will have some continuity in its leadership. C'nir knows the job already, and he's a good Wingleader.”

“Assuming he doesn't flame you while your back's turned.”

“Not this Turn,” C'nir said. “Not unless he _really_ messes things up.”

“C'nir knows the job,” O'reb repeated, “and, assuming I still have it, his support gives me credence I wouldn't otherwise have.”

“It won't appease everyone,” F'ren mused, totting up in his head which riders would be most likely to cause problems. He'd been quietly impressed by O'reb's reasoning so far, but there were some riders who wouldn't give him a chance regardless of what his potential might be. “F'ass and T'frick and P'lindis won't be easily swayed from Sh'vek – but C'nir's appointment should go some way to shoring up your authority.”

“That's what I'm hoping. And that's part of the reason why I need you: not because everyone knows how much Sh'vek hates you, but to be someone who can balance C'nir. Otherwise, the Weyr would look to him and only him right from the start.” O'reb gave C'nir an apologetic look.

C'nir waved a hand dismissively. “I can't say I'd turn it down, but it wasn't Telemath that Alaireth chose. You need to start strong and stay strong. You'll have my loyalty, and Telemath's, at least until next time Alaireth rises. For now, I'll be happy enough to see Sh'vek gone.”

“Aren't we all?” F'ren murmured, giving Rahnis a doubtful look. “But saying he's gone won't be anywhere near enough, will it?” He turned his attention back to the new Weyrleader. “I assume you'll be taking Flamestrike from him?” O'reb had already ruled out his current Wing, and _someone_ would need to take Sh'vek's place. Finding the right wingsecond to help him manage it, that would be key.

“No,” O'reb said.

The word barely registered in F'ren's ears. “J'garray will make you look good by contrast, but that's about the only good thing about him as a Wingsecond. Two competent browns would serve the Wing well, but I think you'll need at least one bronze, just to prove your authority extends that far.”

“No, F'ren,” O'reb repeated firmly. “Sh'vek will be leaving the Weyr, but I won't take on his Wing.” He paused, looking F'ren in the eyes. “I'm taking yours.”

F'ren rocked back in surprise. “Snowfall? You _want_ Snowfall? Why?”

“It's not to cover my own inadequacy, if that's what you're worried about.”

He'd as much as implied that the Weyrleader might want to use J'garray for the same purpose, F'ren realised, as well as failing to listen. “Forgive me, Weyrleader,” F'ren said, abashed. “I'm not at my best right now.”

“No. If you're ready to hear my reasons...?”

Grimacing slightly, F'ren nodded.

“I need to learn to lead,” O'reb continued, “effectively and fast. You've turned that Wing around, kept them alive and flaming when half the Weyr's marks were being wagered against you. Don't tell me you can't do the same for me. Teach me, F'ren. Or tell me someone who could do a better job.”

It made sense, he supposed. F'ren closed his eyes, recalling what he himself had learned over the turns, and from whom. A surprising amount had come from Sh'vek, either by example or omission, but most of his favourite tricks had been picked up from his first Wingleader, L'sard...including the appeal to his ego that O'reb had just made. L'sard was six turns dead, but F'ren could well imagine how hard the man would be laughing now. He looked across at C'nir, then at Rahnis. She'd kept noticeably quiet through the whole exchange, letting O'reb manage things for himself. A good sign, that.

“R'fint could,” F'ren said, “but you'll be hearing yourself called 'weyrling' if you ask it of him. So. If you want Snowfall – and me – then we're yours. Though I wish I could say that Thread was the only problem ahead of us all.”

“Sh'vek,” O'reb said with a surprising level of distaste.

“Yes. Sh'vek.” F'ren turned to Rahnis, still wondering what she had planned for the man. “What do you mean to do about him, Weyrwoman?”

“I can't promise this will work, but I think it's the best chance we have.” Rahnis took a deep breath, and started to explain.


	42. Chapter 42

_Delayed by fall, came the trader late_  
 _to the Gather at Bitra Hold_  
 _And just for a pitch to sell his wares_  
 _on ground well muddied by spavined mares_  
 _did the Steward ask for a full sixteenth_  
 _of every mark's worth sold._

_And the wine was sour and the water dear_  
 _but dearer still were his wife and child_  
 _And stock unsold won't fill their needs_  
 _or warm the hearth in winter's chill._

_Through a rainy day and a stormy night_  
 _at the Gather at Bitra Hold_  
 _He did his best to sell his wares_  
 _ignoring the stench of the ill-bred mares_  
 _Not once did he earn even half the worth_  
 _of anything he sold_

_And the wine was sour and the water dear_  
 _but dearer still were his wife and child_  
 _and he wondered how he'd fill their needs_  
 _or warm the hearth in winter's chill._

_But his luck did change, as it often does_  
 _at the Gathers at Bitra Hold._  
 _When the thieving teamster fled with his mares_  
 _burdened by sacks of stolen wares_  
 _in their wake he found a small clay pot_  
 _whose worth was marks untold_

_And the wine was sour and the water dear_  
 _but dearer still were his wife and child_  
 _and a fire-lizard egg might fill their needs_  
 _held close to his heart against the chill._

_Soon came the Steward and the Guards_  
 _through the Gather at Bitra Hold_  
 _And they ruined the trader's remaining wares_  
 _While cursing the filthy, fleet-footed mares_  
 _And the thing they sought? A small clay pot_  
 _that would hatch a fire-lizard gold._

_And the wine was sour and the water dear_  
 _but dearer still were his wife and child_  
 _Who could he trust to meet his needs?_  
 _To pay him marks, not do him ill?_

_The hard-eyed man the trader found_  
 _at the Gather at Bitra Hold_  
 _With threats alone would pay for the wares_  
 _thought lost by the thief who'd fled with his mares:_  
 _He claimed the pot and the wealth to come_  
 _that the egg inside foretold._

_Closer by each hour, back to water clear_  
 _went the trader home to his wife and child_  
 _bearing fifty marks from the Steward's hand_  
 _for the pot again on his hearth did stand_  
 _and the hard-eyed man was wherry meat_  
 _while a wherry's egg basked in fiery heat..._  
 _And close to his heart did the trader hold_  
 _a new-hatched fire-lizard queen of gold._

 

**Morning, 17.3.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

  
From his vantage high above the mountains, Sh'vek surveyed his Weyr. The east-facing outer slopes of the mountain shone a rosy pink in the early morning light, while the spindles cast sharp, jagged shadows across the opposing face, grasping the Weyr entire like some vast hand. The sight was hardly new to him, but today the stark contrasts of light and shade seemed more fitting than usual. Yesterday's misfortune might have cast his rightful rank into doubt, but the coming conflict would end with him once again in ascendance, and his rule of the Weyr unchallenged.

Today, the queens of Pern would do _his_ bidding.

Three of them had already arrived: Ondarth of Telgar and Chasyunth of Igen, senior within their own Weyrs, had all chosen comfortable spots on the rim after depositing their riders on the ground, while Serreni, the woman he'd long assumed to be his own daughter, was down in the bowl with her queen Minith. It was a shame that the timing hadn't worked out better, really; Carth's clutch would hatch within days – if not hours – but until it did, Vallenka was firmly stranded on Ista Island. That left Benden and Fort. The last of the Weyrwomen to arrive would surely be Sonaldra of Fort; she thought far too much of her own prestige and Fort's pre-eminence to do otherwise.

 _Any word on the Benden delegation?_ he asked Ormaith. _Didn't Delene say she was on her way with Pathya or Melya or whichever one of them it was in the end?_

The bronze dipped a wing and slid out of the rising column of air, heading back towards the Star Stones. _They were, but Goth says something happened and Junkath called Czanath back. His rider will explain on their return. Weyrwoman Granatia will accompany Delene instead of Pathya, and they will be departing Benden very soon now._

_Good. Whatever made Granatia change her mind, it's good._

Weyrwoman Granatia rarely left Benden – it was said that she rarely left Junkath's weyr, these days – but, thanks to the two half-sisters who rode junior golds at Benden, she had strong opinions on the proper behaviour of weyrwomen, and a well-honed dislike of arguments over precedence. She had also been a good friend of Vallenka's, before her failing health had limited her to her home Weyr. _Let's do this properly, shall we? Bespeak Benden's watch dragon, and offer the queens a good current visual._

Sh'vek kept his focus on the view ahead of him while the bronze conveyed the image east. That done, Ormaith circled away, placing himself a dozen dragonlengths away and perpendicular to the arriving queens' path. Holding their position, they waited.

 _They come, now,_ Ormaith said a little over a minute later.

Granatia and Junkath emerged from _between_ fractionally earlier than Linnebith and several dozen lengths ahead, Delene having used a visual of her own making. G'dil's Heggith and T'frick's Goth flanked the High Reaches queen in pointless propriety, while a small Benden blue followed in the slipstream of his own queen. Sh'vek sensed Ormaith conveying their joint welcome and offered escort into the bowl, but the suggestion of Linnebith's ledge as a resting place was immediately discounted by the Benden queen.

 _Junkath will make herself comfortable in our Hatching Cavern,_ Ormaith told his rider as the three dragons spiralled down to the bowl. _She said she's had ample of Linnebith's company for one day, and certainly won't sit on her ledge like a smitten bronze. She asks for her sleep not to be disturbed._

There'd been more to the message than that, but Ormaith hadn't chosen to pass it on. _Tell me,_ Sh'vek insisted.

_She was admiring Mannifeth._

_Is_ every _gold on Pern proddy right now?_

_No. But Junkath does find our particular situation...amusing._

Sh'vek glared down towards Alaireth's ledge, where the bronze in question was restlessly nuzzling against the slumbering queen's neck. Neither Rahnis nor O'reb had yet left the Weyrwoman's weyr that morning, but their dragons were making it sharding clear to the Weyr where the woman's favour lay: Mannifeth was Alaireth's chosen mate, and whether Rahnis followed her queen in that respect or not, she obviously meant to wield her authority in mutual, joint support with her Weyrleader. Faranth knew, the boy certainly had none of his own...and he'd have an unhappy shock when hers crumbled beneath them both.

 _Tell Junkath she's welcome to our sands as soon as Holshayth of Fort deigns to join us,_ Sh'vek said to Ormaith, _but suggest she doesn't sleep too deeply, please_. If Rahnis and her queen had to be forcibly subdued it would be better to have Junkath's assistance right from the start. He wasn't sure how much use either of the two older golds would be, but if their strength was required there'd be no time to spare to wake Junkath up and drag her back out into the bowl mid-way through the process. _What about Linnebith and Delene? Can we rely on them to act as we want?_

Ormaith didn't answer instantly. _Linnebith knows that she, too, will rise soon. She is pleased not to have lost one of her own favourites, and believes the Weyr's other bronzes will now not be divided in their loyalty. She is both right and wrong in that, and if we allow them the chance I do not think it will be long before Alaireth makes her see her mistake. Delene is still very upset, and feels she has been wronged by everyone except G'dil. She will not hinder you, but she knows Alaireth's flight was why we sent her to Benden, and it is not enough that we wish her to be senior now. She is not so slow of wits not to realise that we would not be doing this if I had been the one to catch Alaireth._

The dragon's memories of the flight were still fresh, and Ormaith's mind was dulled by resentment and regrets. He'd had strength and stamina to spare, compared to the rest of the pack – more than enough to outlast the competition, to wait for the moment when queen and Weyrwoman both would have eagerly welcomed Ormaith's triumph – but there had been several missed chances when Ormaith might have managed to end the flight on his own terms, had Sh'vek only permitted him to try.

 _The fault_ was _mine,_ Sh'vek acknowledged _._ It would have been a brutal, likely injurious mating, if he'd taken one of those early chances, and would have set an unpleasant tone for all subsequent flights...but at least he wouldn't have had _this_ to deal with.

In all truth, Sh'vek couldn't recall when Ormaith had last lost a flight. For this one to have ended as it had, so close to its consummation, utterly beggared belief. Only M'arsen's presence and Ormaith's clear need of him had prevented him from giving his white-hot fury free rein. Half a day had cooled it somewhat, but done little to lessen its intensity. He was determined to make Rahnis pay for her choice, exactly as he'd warned her he would.

Ormaith landed lightly on the ground, crouching to allow his rider an easier dismount. Sh'vek leapt down and went to offer Weyrwoman Granatia his assistance. She waved his hand away, instead summoning the bluerider who'd accompanied her to help her down.

“Weyrwoman Granatia, my deepest thanks,” he said by way of greeting when she'd finally finished dismounting. “I trust Weyrwoman Sonaldra won't delay us all by too much.”

“If she does, she does,” Granatia muttered, clearly more audibly than she thought, while her crabbed fingers picked at the buckles of her queen's straps, loosening each by several notches, “but I've told her time and time again she'll have to put up with my snores by sunset Benden-time, whatever time we begin one of these things.” Ducking down beneath her queen's neck to reach the final buckle, she gave a dry cough and raised her voice, making sure she could be properly heard. “In the meanwhile, someone can fetch me a hot tisane.”

“I'll see that it happens,” Sh'vek said, nudging Ormaith for the name of a rider conveniently close to the kitchens. “D'menack will bring a cup out shortly, and escort you to the meeting room. The other Weyrwomen and my second, M'arsen, are already there. Do you have any preferences for the tisane?”

“Hot,” Granatia said, straightening up again. “Like you'd already know if you'd been listening.” She turned her dark, beady eyes up at him and squinted, deepening the already extensive lines that patterned her face. “You're still wearing your knots, I see. Hmph.”

“I have this Weyr's best interests at heart, lady Granatia, as I always have. There _are_ worse crimes.”

“So I gather. Now I really _am_ glad I came.” She turned away, muttering to herself again. “Faranth only knows what kind of ideas Pathya would've brought back home with her!”

“Weyrleader!”

T'frick's pronouncement won another grunt from Granatia, but Sh'vek was too keen to hear the man's report to pay the woman much more mind. “T'frick,” he said, pleased by the very proper salute that had accompanied his title. “What happened, then?”

The tall wingleader cast a furtive glance back over his shoulder towards Delene and Linnebith. “We were all set to leave when a rider came in from Fort. Just a green, but she got sent straight in to Junkath's weyr. Goth was feeling, well, chatty, so I let him flirt with her a little...but all she wanted to talk about was Telemath! She said he's at Fort!”

Sh'vek let out a slow sigh. “Is that so?” The rapidity with which dragon gossip travelled was usually as inevitable as falling Threads, but sometimes the most surprising things were left unremarked.

“I think he's why Weyrwoman Sonaldra is delayed,” T'frick went on. “He's been sent to try to stop you getting Delene re-instated as senior, he must be!”

“Or, he might simply have taken up the transfer I mentioned during the last meeting,” Sh'vek patiently explained. “Forget about C'nir. We spoke last night, before he left. He was no more pleased to lose that flight than I was, but he decided he'd rather leave than fight...either against Rahnis, or under that _boy_ O'reb.”

“Oh.”

“And Sonaldra's late because she's always late,” Sh'vek added before glancing briefly up at the sky. “Rahnis asked C'nir if he'd be one of the boy's seconds, would you believe? Alongside F'ren, naturally.” His lips twisted in displeasure, and he found himself wishing yet again that he'd dealt with the man properly instead of using him as leverage with the weyrwoman. Not that it would matter in the long run; as soon as Rahnis was stripped of her power, F'ren's fall would be fast and hard and _very_ satisfyingly permanent. “I've had people keep their ears open since, but there's been no word of anyone else agreeing to take the job on.”

“Very wise of them,” T'frick said sagely.

Sh'vek changed the subject. “Was G'dil any trouble while you were at Benden?”

“Except for being a right smug bastard?” T'frick shook his head. “No. He thinks he's going to be Weyrleader. Delene wasn't thrilled, but his ambition's definitely helped convince her to back you today.”

“Good,” Sh'vek said, smiling, though he was no longer quite as trusting of the man's insights as he might have been half an hour earlier. “I'll speak to Delene before we start. She should-” He broke off at the sound of a strident draconic bellow: Alaireth had woken to the news that she was no longer the only queen present in the Weyr. “Shard it!”

 _Alaireth greets the other queens,_ Ormaith told him. _She welcomes them all to her Weyr, and offers Kiath's_ _ledge to Holshayth._

 _Holshayth? Sonaldra's here?_ Sh'vek looked up again and confirmed the Fort Weyrwoman's arrival for himself.

 _Yes. Alaireth bespeaks her, and the other queens as well. She regrets the need that brought them here, so far from the comforts of their home Weyrs, and asks that they do not hesitate to inform her of any detail that would make their time here more pleasant. She commands us all to be respectful and make them feel welcome. She also acknowledges and welcomes Linnebith's return as a valued fellow queen, but definitely_ not _as her equal._

_Faranth, she sounds like she thinks they're her guests, come visiting for cakes and klah! Where's Rahnis? She can play at Weyrwoman as prettily as she wants, but it won't save a single inch of her hide once I get started._

Ormaith was silent, and Sh'vek wondered why his dragon was suddenly so intent on the Star Stones and the blue on watch. He squinted hard; Ribbath was a Flamestrike blue, and his rider of unquestionable loyalty. _Ormaith?_

The bronze was too silent, Sh'vek realised. He forcibly pulled his gaze away from the sky and looked around. T'frick was staring upwards, slack-jawed...and just beyond him, F'ren was walking towards them both. “You!”

“Rider Sh'vek,” F'ren drawled, clearly making the most of the insulting lack of proper title. “The Weyrwoman requires your presence.”

F'ren raised an arm and gave a _cease action_ signal; an instant later, Sh'vek felt Ormaith's thoughts properly again, freed of Alaireth's restraining influence.

“She'll have to sharding _wait_ ,” Sh'vek spat out furiously. “Remind her that she chose to bring this on herself. Alaireth isn't anywhere near strong enough to resist the will of half a dozen other queens, and Rahnis can beg and plead as much as she wants, but it's not going to prevent her peers from convicting her – and you, for that matter. She'll have my _presence_ when they do.”

F'ren smiled. “Of course. Don't let me keep you; I'll pass the message on.”

Trusting T'frick to follow, Sh'vek walked briskly to the steps that ran up to Kiath's weyr. Granatia was making slow, halting work of them, even leaning on D'menack's arm for support. With her own bluerider ahead of her, dangling his bulky satchels on both sides, Sh'vek was forced to follow behind them both. The sight that greeted him when he finally crested the ledge was a most unwelcome one: Rahnis was standing at the entrance to the weyr, deep in conversation with Biarta and Sonaldra.

 _Trying to stop this before it starts, no doubt,_ he thought to Ormaith. He left the alternative unsaid: that she might be entertaining ideas of laying the blame for recent events on him. Determined to take control of matters, Sh'vek made for the meeting room; tradition would only carry her so far, and he wasn't going to stay outside long enough for her to assume he'd come at her order. Half way down the corridor, he recognised Irdana of Igen's whiny, nasal voice raised in argument with Serreni. Perhaps it was inevitable that the Nerat issue would get raised at some point today, but M'arsen should've known better than to let the pair of them get started on it so soon. Sh'vek knew he might need Irdana's agreement along with the rest of them, and if things got too heated now, she'd balk at ever siding with Serreni on anything. He lifted the latch and pushed the door open. The two women, sitting on opposite sides of the table, instantly fell silent, but neither looked his way. Instead, they both turned to the head of the table, where _O'reb_ had dared to sit in his place!

Now _that_ he would not tolerate. Sh'vek stormed inside and levelled a finger at the boy. “You! Get out. Serreni, where's M'arsen?”

O'reb answered the question before Serreni had a chance. “M'arsen's not here. I'm afraid he had to be restrained.”

Restrained? The boy had some nerve! Sh'vek forcibly reminded himself that as much as he wanted to haul O'reb bodily out of the room, it really wouldn't present the impression he was after. He stopped, and crossed his arms across his chest. “And if you're not out of my chair before I can count to five, I'll do far worse to you,” he said in a quiet, dangerous tone.

 _Minith sends her rider's apologies,_ Ormaith sent. _She thought it best not to offend Chasyunth's rider so soon in the day._

 _More likely she wants to test the currents before she swims too far from shore._ He'd been expecting better help from that quarter. Sh'vek looked over his shoulder and nodded to T'frick, when O'reb continued to show no sign of moving. “Get him out of here.”

O'reb leaned back from the table and rested his arms on those of the chair. “T'frick, you can leave.”

Sh'vek opened his mouth to countermand the order, but to his surprise he found T'frick already turning to go. “Alaireth, _again_?” he asked, grabbing the man's arm. “You weren't involved in the flight! Tell Goth to stand up to her!”

T'frick shook his head and backed away. “It's _all_ of them, Sh'vek.”

That didn't bode well! “Are you sure?”

T'frick didn't answer the question. “Got to go,” he gasped. “I'm coming, Goth!” He almost ran down Granatia as he left the room, knocking her cup from her hands and forcing her to grab hold of D'menack to steady herself.

“Well!” Granatia huffed, shaking her head as she examined her clothes for spillage. “I'll sit by Serreni, I think. See to my things, B'ko, and then you can fetch me a fresh cup.”

The bluerider who'd accompanied Granatia sidled sideways into the room, then scurried over to the seat that was usually C'nir's. Granatia followed at her usual trundlebug pace, still leaning on D'menack's arm, her eyes darting around the room as she sized up its occupants. By the time she reached her chosen chair the first of the bluerider's bags had been emptied, revealing two bulky cushions, felted slippers, and a leather-bound writing slate. Two blankets and a portable work-box overflowing with yarn and hooked needles quickly followed from the second. “I've a new grandchild on the way,” Benden's Weyrwoman explained, catching O'reb's curious look.

The sheer flippancy of her priorities was exceedingly irritating. “Is there anything _else_ you'll be needing, Weyrwoman Granatia?” Sh'vek asked, half hoping his request would go unheard.

Granatia dismissed D'menack with a word of thanks and took firm hold of the back of her chair. “Not unless you want to help B'ko with my boots.”

It was a deeply insulting request; Sh'vek shook his head, wondering if one of Benden's junior weyrwoman might have been better after all. Leaving the problem of O'reb to wait until he had a better understanding of the situation, Sh'vek looked questioningly at Serreni. “'All of them'?” he asked, echoing T'frick's words.

“Don't be ridiculous,” Serreni scoffed, “It was only their two,” she said, waggling a finger at Rahnis and Biarta, chatting amiably with one another just beyond the door, “and Irdana's Chasyunth.” She shot a winsome smile at O'reb, sitting two places to her right. “I'd do as Weyrleader Sh'vek says, boy.”

Moving to the opposite side of the table, Sh'vek crouched down beside Irdana's chair, bringing his face level with her own. The elderly Weyrwoman was a full decade older than Granatia, but although the turns had been far kinder to her, everyone knew that she would have have retired long ago had circumstances at Igen permitted. Chasyunth hadn't risen to mate in well over four turns, but none of her three juniors were good prospects to replace her: Arafth and Vedrealth had both been sorely injured in the mating flight that had claimed the life of Carth's first queen daughter, leaving Arafth so slow and ungainly that she rarely made it out of sight of the Weyrbowl before being caught, and Vedrealth unable to fly at all. As far as the youngest pair went, no-one had much good to say about Larren and Trikinth. Trikinth rarely clutched more than a dozen eggs no matter how high she flew, and Larren hadn't fought Thread or even touched a flamethrower for over twenty turns, ever since she'd nearly killed her own queen during her first turn out of weyrlinghood. The weight of responsibility for Igen rested heavily on Irdana's shoulders, but Faranth help the man who dared to tell her she wasn't up to the task!

Today, however, Sh'vek was more than willing to set his disdain for Irdana and her ailing Weyr aside. She was a Weyrwoman of Pern, whatever one thought of Igen and the mess she'd made of it. “Weyrwoman Irdana,” he began.

She straightened in her chair. “And what title should I give you?”

“Forget about that for now. You were discussing the Nerat territory, weren't you?”

Irdana sniffed, and looked away. “You won't persuade me, Sh'vek. Ista reneged on our latest treaty, and I won't see them profit at our expense. _Igen_ Weyr has first claim on those Holds...assuming Benden ever gives them up to any of us.”

Sh'vek smiled at her. “Mmm. If you side with me today, I'll see to it that Vallenka cedes Ista's claim to the Nerat territories to Igen.”

“I told you, I – wait, what did you say?”

Sh'vek repeated his offer. On the other side of the table, Serreni sucked in a quick, outraged breath, which was shortly followed by word from Ormaith.

_Minith tells me you've no right to promise such a thing. Her rider demands to know whether you're being serious._

_Why not? Igen's four queens are all either old, crippled or useless; not one of them is capable of adding another to their ranks, even if they did have the will to do so. Vallenka will see a queen of Carth's line hold that Weyr within her lifetime whatever happens. We can all argue it out later, but Ista loses nothing if Serreni supports me now._

Irdana shook her head. “No. No, I don't believe you. Vallenka made her views quite clear.”

“Well?” Sh'vek looked over at Serreni, who was frowning as she thought the problem over.

 _Carth tells me it won't happen,_ Ormaith told his rider, _but she permits us to pretend otherwise if it will help our cause_.

_Tell Minith that'll be good enough for me._

Serreni brushed some imagined dirt from her sleeves. “Obviously, Weyrwoman Vallenka needs to be consulted on this properly...but she says we might be able to come to some arrangement, if the High Reaches is willing to offer Ista suitable recompense.” She patted the arm of the chair beside her, then beckoned towards the doorway. “Come, sit beside me, Delene. This is more properly your business than Weyrleader Sh'vek's.”

“My thanks, Serreni,” Delene said, smiling graciously as she swept into the room. She'd unbound her hair and exchanged her trousers and boots for skirt and heeled shoes since Sh'vek had last seen her, only a few minutes earlier; with the speed of the transformation, he half imagined that she'd suddenly discovered timing for herself. “Though I can't imagine what you'd want from us,” the weyrwoman continued, “when you have all of Ista's delights right where you are.”

“Influence, girl,” Irdana muttered; she was clearly irritated by her own lack of it, to Sh'vek's eyes.

Sonaldra, Rahnis and Biarta followed Delene in. “If Nerat _must_ be discussed,” Rahnis said in a firm tone, “I have a suggestion of my own. If Irdana will agree to Ista taking responsibility for the peninsula, as a gesture of our goodwill I'm willing to trade a portion of our Crafthall tithe for hunting rights in Keroon, in addition to transferring a junior queen to Igen, as soon as the next High Reaches goldrider completes her weyrling training.”

Irdana had been looking worryingly in favour of the idea until Rahnis spoke her final clause. “There's _nothing_ the matter with Igen's weyrling training,” the Igen Weyrwoman snapped defensively. “It's certainly no different to your own. Offer a hatchling – or, better yet, an egg – and I might consider the idea.”

“A little short of extra queens, aren't you, Rahnis?” Granatia piped up.

Rahnis took the comment in her stride. “Right now, yes. But Alaireth's fecundity is proven, and any daughter of hers would meet the terms of the Interval agreement between Igen and Ista. I ask nothing in return. Vote as you believe right, today, and leave settling the details of Nerat's protection for another occasion.”

Sh'vek chuckled; Rahnis' offer had been just as much a bribe as his own, no matter how much moral high ground she tried to claim...and reminding Irdana of the weakness of Igen's recent clutches by contrast with her own queen's was surely another misstep. “Yes. We have more important matters to discuss today.” Standing up again, he turned back to O'reb. “Sitting there doesn't make you Weyrleader, you know.”

“You're right,” the boy said, head bowed. He pushed himself to his feet and slowly raised his eyes to meet Sh'vek's own, then said: “It was Mannifeth outflying Ormaith that did that.”

Any chance the young bronzerider had of being forgiven for his ill-judged victory burned fiercely away to char, there and then. “Did he, now? Don't be a fool, boy.”

O'reb stepped back from the chair as Sh'vek bore down towards him; for a brief moment, he entertained the thought that the young man was actually giving ground. It lasted only as long as it took for O'reb to turn his back on him.

“Weyrwoman Sonaldra, please. I was taught that Fort Weyr traditionally leads meetings such as these.”

“Then you've been taught our traditions well...though perhaps a little too recently for my liking,” Sonaldra said as she strode round on the opposite side of the table.

Sh'vek could hardly push the boy aside _now_. Dismayed, he backtracked to stand beside Irdana and watched as Sonaldra took O'reb's place.

“Will you excuse me?” the boy asked her, as though he thought a foreign Weyrwoman's opinion was of any consequence at all in a man's own Weyr. “There is much to be done...and much I still need to learn.”

Oh, he'd learn, all right. Sh'vek consoled himself with that thought as he watched O'reb leave.

“You, on the other hand, seem to have forgotten our traditions completely,” Sonaldra said in a low voice.

She meant him, of course. Sh'vek turned back to her, meaning to explain himself, but the woman didn't give him a chance to talk.

“You're not going to question _my_ right to sit here, are you?” she demanded.

 _Be calm,_ Ormaith thought to him, and Sh'vek could feel the dragon leeching away at his anger. _This has not begun as you wished it to, but beginnings are only beginnings. The ending can still be yours to decide._

With his dragon's support, Sh'vek easily kept his temper under control. “I wouldn't break with tradition at all were it not absolutely necessary, but when tradition comes into conflict with the good of the Weyr, I would be derelict in my duty to Pern to put tradition first. This Weyr has been beset by tragedy, and now lies in the hands of a woman whose self-aggrandising scheming bears much of the responsibility for its current plight!”

He looked over at Rahnis: she was still standing close to the door, and her features gave the impression that she was listening with patient interest. Sh'vek lowered his voice, colouring the tone with deep regret. “The judgement and punishment of criminal acts is a Weyrleader's responsibility, but no individual man – or Weyr – can bring a Weyrwoman to justice, not acting alone.”

“Indeed you cannot,” Sonaldra agreed briskly, before starting in on one of her habitual lectures. “A Weyr is no more or less autonomous than a Hold or a Craft. And, just as they do, it is given to the Weyrwomen to meet in Conclave as and when required. It is not something we do regularly – it usually indicates a gross failing on the part of a Weyrleader or one of our own company – but, there are rare occasions when our unity of purpose is required. When Holds tithe insufficiently, when questions are raised over the boundaries of our respective Weyrs that cannot be resolved by other means....” Sonaldra paused, long enough for her disapproval of Irdana's and Serreni's actions to be registered. “And,” she continued, “when we are, regretfully, called to judge the actions of our peers.”

She pulled a buckled leather folder onto her lap, opened it up, and methodically laid out a number of hides on the table in front of her. “We will proceed in the usual fashion,” she explained. “The complainant will speak first, and I will have Holshayth call in any additional persons that the rest of you wish to hear from after we've finished hearing from the accused.” She smiled to herself, as if her words amused her. “If our joint decision remains in doubt at that point, we will continue our deliberations in private. I see no reason why Rahnis and Sh'vek should not both remain for now. Does anyone object?”

“I have no objection,” Rahnis said, moving to stand at the far end of the table, opposite Sonaldra.

“Nor I,” Sh'vek added as he followed her, wishing he'd been faster to claim the woman's place.

Sonaldra cast her gaze around the table, past Irdana, himself and Biarta, then across to Granatia, Serreni and Delene, making certain that everyone's approval had been registered. She opened an inkwell and started making notes on a fresh hide. Reaching the end of her first line of text, Sonaldra looked back up at Delene, pen poised in readiness to continue. “Weyrwoman Delene, I'm quite certain we will be calling on you later. I expect your queen will be glad of your company until then.”

Delene was up on her feet in an instant. “But my place is-”

“With your queen,” Sonaldra repeated, looking back down at her notes. “I have to agree with Rahnis here; this is not a matter upon which any High Reaches weyrwoman should be casting a vote. Off you go.”

So _that_ 's what they'd been discussing earlier! “It won't be enough,” he murmured, low enough that only Rahnis could hear him.

 _Holshayth is pressuring Linnebith,_ Ormaith informed him, _but she's not strong enough to make Delene leave_.

Next to Serreni, Delene was still struggling with what to do. She'd sat down, then leapt up again as fast as if she'd sat on a tack, almost tripping over her chair in the process. The young weyrwoman's face twisted in disgust as she fought to free her skirts from where they'd caught on the carved wood, her coarse expression enough to mar her beauty. “But I...I'm....”

Sh'vek found himself on the receiving end of a most beseeching look from the weyrwoman. Delene's mouth worked silently, for which fact he was very glad: she looked to be on the verge of saying something regrettable. “I'll do everything I can on your behalf, Delene,” Sh'vek told her. “Please give my regards to Linnebith.” _Tell Linnebith that Delene should go,_ he asked silently of his dragon. _Tell them both. It's not what I wanted, but better we do it than Alaireth does._

 _I already have. And I warned Delene what she's thinking is best_ not _said aloud._

 _Absolutely not!_ Sh'vek agreed, as Ormaith shared the merest gist of Delene's imagery with him, but by then it was already too late.

Sonaldra sucked in her breath sharply. “I'll pretend Holshayth didn't hear that!”

Delene blushed a deep red, grabbed up her shawl and turned to leave, her resentment at being sent away a palpable pressure that Sh'vek could feel all too easily via his dragon's awareness of the woman's thoughts. It was a blow to his own needs, losing a sure vote in his favour...but not an insurmountable one. _Unusually decisive of Sonaldra, don't you think, Ormaith? I wonder how Rahnis persuaded her?_

Delene slammed the door closed behind her. “My apologies, Weyrwomen,” Sh'vek said. “Delene is a very sensitive woman. I don't excuse her poor manners, but she has been wronged, and feels it keenly. I'll see that she apologises properly later.”

“Thank you, Sh'vek.” Sonalda half lidded her eyes, and smiled with satisfaction. “Holshayth thanks you for your assistance. I trust I can count on your continued cooperation?”

“Indubitably,” he said, returning her smile.

Rahnis glanced across at him, and for the first time that day he caught a glimpse of nervousness in her eyes. “Shall we begin, Sonaldra?”

“Yes.” Sh'vek wondered how little it would take to break Rahnis. She knew what was coming, and the consequences must have been preying on her mind for days...and whatever else she'd tried outside with Sonaldra, it seemed that Fort would be standing by its avowed neutrality after all. “I challenge this woman's fitness to hold the rank of Senior Weyrwoman for the High Reaches.”

One of the women at the table gave a slight cough; Sh'vek waited a second before continuing to talk. “Any single one of her cr-”

He was forced to stop, mid-word, when the woman – Sonaldra, he guessed from the direction – coughed again, more loudly this time. Sh'vek turned back to the table, meaning to point out the ample supply of water and cups, and saw Sonaldra leaning forwards with her elbows on the table, her chin resting on one hand and a document held out towards him in the other.

“You'll have to wait your turn, bronzerider,” she said. “Weyrwoman Rahnis had her own complaint delivered to me three days ago. Quite aside from the current disparity in your respective ranks, that gives it clear precedence over your own.”

He closed his eyes, letting the unpleasant implications sink in. _She's not counting on tradition to save her, Ormaith! Sear and score her, she thinks she can burn us with our own flames!_ He forced out a laugh. “Do you seriously believe you can see me tried for your own crimes, Rahnis?”

“Is that what you think I'm doing?” she asked softly, head tilted to one side. She tucked the ends of her short hair firmly behind her ears and gave a quick shake of her head. “No. Disciplining a criminal bronzerider is well within a Weyrwoman's capacity. I'd hardly call them all here for _that_.”

“What, then?” Serreni asked, looking at least as confused as Sh'vek himself felt.

Rahnis jutted out her chin defiantly. “The _former_ Weyrleader of this Weyr questions my right and fitness to stand as Senior Weyrwoman. I've called you here today to answer that very question.”

 

 

 

The truth, Sh'vek decided as the hours wore on, could be a curiously flexible thing. He'd had a perfect condemnation of the woman beside him all planned out, but in her hands the same events and facts had taken on a very different shape. Her intent was obvious – she meant to emasculate his own challenge, without directly accusing him herself. As strange as it was, a woman arranging her own arraignment, he could see a peculiar logic to it. She sought confirmation of her rank, not the condemnation and removal of his – he'd been far too careful for her to have succeeded there – and with Weyr tradition on her side as well the former was, in principle, far easier for her to obtain. The crimes he'd meant to lay at her feet were either claimed outright as necessary acts for the greater good, or explained as the failings of a Weyrwoman's duty of oversight, regardless of the fact that she'd been merely a junior at the time. By shouldering a share of the responsibility for the misfortunes that all knew had happened on _his_ watch, she undermined his position far more than her own. And, by insisting that blame for the Weyr's misfortunes must lie with _one_ of them she tied her own purported innocence squarely to his guilt, without any need for the latter to be incontrovertibly proven. He, after all, was _not_ the one on trial.

As Rahnis reached the end of her exceedingly thorough accounting of the past half-turn, Sh'vek realised he was grudgingly impressed. The woman had done a remarkable job with what she'd had available to her, leaving him with serious doubts over his ability to turn things around and persuade the assembled Weyrwoman to vote unanimously in his favour. Biarta of Telgar had been so appalled by what Rahnis claimed had happened in the aftermath of Maenida's murder that Ondarth had given voice to her rider's shock in a bellow that had been loud enough to hear from the far side of the Weyr. But although Telgar's Weyrwoman was probably as much a lost cause for him as Serreni was for Rahnis, Sh'vek was confident that the other Weyrwomen were still a long, long way from being fully convinced either one way or the other. Tradition and her queen's rising might have made Rahnis Weyrwoman of the High Reaches, but he'd held the higher rank of a Pass Weyrleader for nigh on twenty turns. Set against his own record as a tried and tested Weyrleader, an established leader of men and dragons, there was a clear limit to how compelling she could make her case. Her use of timing to engineer Alaireth's unseasonably early rising also appeared to be particularly displeasing to Granatia and Sonaldra both, and if it hadn't been for Alaireth's own testimony he doubted that any one of them would have believed that the queen had hauled two separate dragons back from the brink of a cold death _between._

When his own turn to speak came around, Sh'vek exploited his advantages ruthlessly. He'd built his case against Rahnis upon far more than the confession she'd provided him with in the aftermath of Maenida's death. It was true that his own accounting for the document – as a soon-abandoned attempt at recompense by a grief-stricken, guilty woman – hadn't been quite as convincing as he'd hoped it would be, but it was equally clear that the majority of the assembled Weyrwomen found her own claim – that he had obtained it from her by force, through the threat to the life of her queen – utterly preposterous. The document in question was still the keystone that held his version of events together, bolstered by shadings of doubt and inference and one or two outright lies that he knew she'd have no way to counter...but it was the undeniable truths in her own story that he damned her with: her interference with Egritte's management of the Lower Caverns, the coup she'd engineered through months of timing, and, above and beyond all else, her own attempt to take Maenida's life. Any single one of them ought to have been enough to cast doubt on her character. Taken together, her fitness to remain as Weyrwoman for the High Reaches was barely credible at all. By the time he'd finished, Sh'vek knew he had both Granatia and Irdana thoroughly convinced by his grief for Maenida's loss, and well on the way to seeing everything else his way too.

M'arsen, F'ren, Delene, H'koll and several of the Lower Caverns staff were all called in to offer their testimony after his own, but the bulk of their statements were limited to personal observations and confirmation of facts that neither he nor Rahnis disputed, and it hadn't been difficult to predict what they'd say in advance of their appearance. The points at which his own account diverged from hers had been very carefully chosen: thinking on his feet, he'd given ground where he'd had to, but held it where it could, and not once had he contradicted her without at least one of the other witnesses subsequently confirming his version of events. After H'koll departed, discussion inevitably returned to the few strongly disputed issues that remained. The Master Healer's report was returned to again and again, and although the Weyrwomen considered it with all the weight that Rynder's rank and reputation deserved, no consensus could be reached on whether Sh'vek's or Rahnis' interpretation of Maenida's condition had been correct. Like so much else, it all boiled down to his word against hers, and which of them the other Weyrwomen found most convincing.

Unfortunately for him, in spite of Granatia's disgust over the manner in which Delene had been outranked, Sh'vek eventually found himself revising the Benden Weyrwoman's position. Rahnis had clearly done enough to convince her as well as Biarta of her right to continue holding her current rank. Serreni's support for him was a given, and her relative silence throughout the proceedings had kept Irdana on his side...but Sonaldra's position was far less certain. The Fort Weyrwoman wasn't someone who was comfortable with conflict, even within the bounds of her own skull: she hated change, had worn the same style of dress ever since she'd Impressed, and the longer the current arguments wore on the more likely she was to snap and start throwing her weight around, or to postpone the Conclave completely until cooler heads prevailed or some such nonsense. If she decided in favour of Rahnis, he had no doubt that Irdana would do likewise, if only to forestall Fort's Weyrwoman from bullying her into doing so anyway. He could see it all too clearly, and looking at Rahnis, he could tell that she saw it too. “You think you've done enough, don't you?” he muttered to her under his breath. Rahnis didn't answer, but the haunted look in her eyes told him that she'd clearly come to know him well enough to perceive the promised threat within his words.

By then, there was little more left to be discussed. Sh'vek waited patiently for the ongoing argument between Irdana and Granatia to peter out, and for Sonaldra to stop grinding her teeth. Whether H'koll had overstepped proper behaviour by calling O'reb back to the Weyr when Alaireth rose scarcely mattered; the boy would fall alongside Rahnis, and Sh'vek himself had no intention of reinforcing the fact that Mannifeth had out-flown Ormaith.

 _Ask Minith to tell Serreni that it's time,_ he instructed the bronze. Rahnis might think she was on the verge of triumph, but he still had plenty of flame left in him...and he knew exactly how Sonaldra might be goaded into aiding him.

No sooner had Sonaldra stepped in and declared the issue of O'reb's presence in the flight completely irrelevant, than the Istan weyrwoman spoke up. “Might I clarify a point of order, Weyrwoman Sonaldra?”

Granatia rolled her eyes and reached into her work-bag for yarn and needles. Fort's Weyrwoman didn't bother hiding her exasperation, either. “Go on, Serreni.”

“The records tell us of only two prior occasions when the Weyrwomen of Pern have acted to remove one of their number.”

“Two?” Irdana asked. “It's only ever happened _once_ before, to Ankala. Or so the rest of you so frequently remind us.”

“Your records are inadequate,” Serreni said. “It _has_ happened before: to an Istan Weyrwoman who lived some five hundred and fifty turns ago. You'll understand why we don't draw attention to it, Irdana, I'm sure.”

The Igen Weyrwoman gave a loud sniff, but stayed silent under Sonaldra's glare.

“Where are you going with this, Serreni?” Rahnis asked, her gaze briefly darting up to meet Sh'vek's as she spoke.

“You can confirm it, can't you Rahnis?” Serreni suggested. “You probably know the contents of our Records Room almost as well as Weyrwoman Vallenka does. Tell them what happened, would you? _After_ Pevali's demotion and transfer.”

Rahnis stiffened, a look of distaste crossing her face. “I don't particularly trust Shessany's records on that era, Serreni.”

Ha! Sh'vek wasn't surprised that she'd seen what Serreni was about; it made him want to smile, watching her squirm like that.

“Very well then, I'll do it,” Serreni said when Rahnis stayed silent. “To put it bluntly: chaos, strife and division. It was covered up very well – they were little more than a decade shy of the coming Pass, and Pern couldn't afford having half its Weyrs at each others' throats – but it _did_ happen. Pevali was removed by a majority vote of only three to two – the autonomy of Ista Weyr was breached _by majority vote_ – and, having done so once, Fort Weyr spent the next twelve turns dictating _their_ rule to the rest of Pern. Which queen resided in which Weyr, which bronzes were permitted to attempt to fly her...Faranth, Shessany's predecessor frequently wrote of riders moving their bowels only on Fort's say-so.”

Sonaldra rolled her eyes. “It was a long time ago. And Fort _is_ the senior Weyr!”

“Was Shessany _serious_?” Biarta asked, stifling a hearty chuckle.

“Some of the time,” Rahnis muttered.

“The Weyrs _did_ re-claim their rightful autonomy before the first Threads fell,” Serreni said, “but I firmly believe that we cannot take any action against Rahnis unless our vote is unanimous. It was in Ankala's case...”

“Half of Igen witnessed Ankala's murder of Dawren! Her guilt was _never_ in doubt.”

“...and I see no reason why it shouldn't also be so today,” Serreni finished.

“This council has always followed the majority ruling, regardless of whether everyone was in accord with it or not,” Sonaldra reminded everyone. “It's never been a problem while _I've_ led this Conclave.”

“I know that,” said Serreni. “But this isn't so simple a matter as coordinating our dealings with the Holds and Crafts, or agreeing on mass transfers. Rahnis asks us to confirm her position as Senior Weyrwoman of the High Reaches. She asks us to accept that she acted for the good of Pern, and not for her own betterment, that her attempt to do _exactly as Ankala did_ was motivated by a desire to protect this Weyr from even greater grief. And I say we _cannot_ condemn her for that, not if there's any doubt, even if only one of us believes her.”

Putting her handicrafts aside Granatia ran her fingers down her slate and underlined something she'd written with a heavy-handed sweep of her chalk, while Biarta gave a surprised grunt, but overall a clear sense of approval at Serreni's words radiated from all the women at the table.

“Serreni, please!” Sh'vek said, concealing his exultation with as good an expression of outrage as he could muster. “You can't possibly think this is the right course!” He turned to the other Weyrwomen, hands raised pleadingly towards them. “Do none of you object to this? Weyrwoman Sonaldra? Irdana?”

“I certainly don't!” Biarta said, thumping the table with her fist. “It's the most sensible idea I've heard all day! Is everyone agreed?”

Hands were raised all around the table, while Rahnis shook her head in dismay. “If a majority is insufficient to remove me,” she said slowly and quietly, “what will it take to confirm my rank?”

“Unanimity, naturally,” Sh'vek drawled. And she'd be waiting until thread stopped falling for that to happen, with Serreni firmly on his side.

“Don't be ridiculous!” Biarta said, smiling at Rahnis. “If we can't come to an agreement amongst ourselves, we'll have to leave it to tradition to decide.” Belatedly, she turned back to Fort's Weyrwoman to confirm her statement. “Won't we Sonaldra? If we don't agree, that automatically makes Rahnis Weyrwoman.”

“No it doesn't!” Serreni retorted. “She already agreed to step aside peacefully if we didn't find in her favour.”

“On the understanding that this would be decided by a majority vote!” Rahnis was bristling with anger. “If there's any doubt at all over who leads this Weyr, be sure that Sh'vek _will_ abuse it. The fighting Wings will split, and if Linnebith challenges Alaireth's authority – which she will, if he encourages Delene – things will only get worse. I've seen the confusion that can create during Fall, and I won't see it happen ever again if I can help it. If you want to avoid seeing a Weyr suffer and come to strife, you won't leave this issue unanswered. Thread is our enemy, not each other.”

Sh'vek took great delight in watching Sonaldra's face harden as Rahnis spoke; she could hardly have phrased it worse. He rested a hand lightly on Rahnis' shoulder, intending to use her instinctive recoil to gently force her backwards from the table. “Then step aside and let someone _competent_ fight it, woman!”

“You _did_ agree to step aside,” Serreni repeated.

Rahnis stood her ground, apparently more willing to tolerate his touch than to move under its guidance. “Yes, I did. And did _you_ all agree to give Ista the sole counting vote? Will none of see this for what it is? Who's leading this Conclave, Sonaldra?”

Sighing, Sonaldra pulled out a fresh hide from her bag, and made a note at the top. “I'm passing Serreni's motion, Rahnis.”

“You're allowing a single, partisan junior goldrider to decide the fate of another Weyr,” Rahnis snapped, brushing Sh'vek's hand away with one of her own. “That's even _worse_ than what happened two Passes back!”

Fort's Weyrwoman glared at her. “Enough, Rahnis. Today, this Conclave speaks in unanimity or not at all. I fully understand your concerns, but Serreni's are equally valid...and you've shown yourself well aware of the possible consequences if there's any doubt over our decision. With the two of you opposing each other so vehemently, and enough Wingleaders siding with each of you.... No, there's no way that this wouldn't end in strife for this Weyr. This Conclave cannot allow that.”

She gave a deep sigh, and leafed through her notes. “You each have your allies here in this room, as well...but what are the rest of us to believe? It's almost certain that one of you – maybe both of you – have lied to us today. Both of you claim your actions were for the greater good. Both of you ask to be judged on the basis of your good intentions, while condemning the other's motivation. And Holshayth can't sense any duplicity in either one of you! It seems unlikely that either one of you would be strong-willed enough to have succeeded in concealing your crimes from her as well as your dragons, but even if you had, and I asked Holshayth to press them both as hard as she can, they can't admit to what they're either ignorant of, or weren't even present to witness.”

Sh'vek nodded sagely. A strong queen might be able to force the truth from him, but he had no intention of being the one to point out to Sonaldra that Holshayth was a very long way from fitting that description.

“How are we to know which of you has truly tried to serve this Weyr, instead of their own interests?” Sonaldra continued. “Who am I to believe? There's so much that doesn't add up, even now. If Sh'vek's the monster you claim him to be, Rahnis, why not ask us to hold his actions to account, instead of your own? Why make your complaint conditional on his loss of rank when your queen rose? And why would he act with such restraint in the face of your repeated provocation, which you admit had very little to do with your queen's proddiness? Is it any wonder that we doubt his guilt, as well as yours? Is it not better that this Conclave _admits_ that we can never be certain of knowing the full truth of what has happened here?”

 _We've_ got _her, Ormaith!_ Sh'vek schooled his features to an expression of resigned, respectful interest as Sonaldra spoke on.

“Is it not better to ask you _both_ to step aside, giving this Weyr fresh leadership in Delene and whichever bronzerider partners her? She might manage this place less smoothly than you would do, but the Holders this Weyr protects would arguably be better off with a more experienced Weyrleader than the young man I met today. Perhaps you _are_ right about Sh'vek, but surely you can accept that your resignation and an open flight for Linnebith is the safer course for us to take today?”

“You're giving him exactly what he wants!”

“Rahnis!” Sonaldra warned, her eyes narrowing, as Rahnis started furiously towards her.

Rahnis gave a quick shake of her head, then stopped in her tracks. _Holshayth,_ Ormaith explained, _though I didn't think her strong enough for that._

 _She's not,_ Sh'vek explained. _But Rahnis isn't fool enough to make a point of it._

“He brought about his own Weyrwoman's death, Sonaldra,” Rahnis said. “He would have _used_ her death to kill another man's dragon.”

“So you claim,” Sonaldra said, scribbling hastily on the hide before her. She kept her gaze intent on what she was writing, seeming reluctant to look Rahnis in the face. “But he's not on trial, Rahnis, and nor is F'ren. You are. You can start by telling your queen to show some _respect_ for mine. You'll agree to step aside if we don't all find in your favour, and to accept whatever additional sanctions a majority vote deems necessary.” She looked up then, and gave Rahnis a sympathetic smile. “I _am_ inclined to believe a great deal of what you've told us today, Rahnis...just not the whole of it. It simply isn't credible. For the worst of it, I really think you _must_ be mistaken.”

Rahnis' shoulders slumped in the face of the inevitable, but Sh'vek wasn't through with Rahnis yet. He'd have his majority siding against her today if it killed him! “You're wrong, Sonaldra,” he said, knowing it would get him everyone's attention. “She wasn't mistaken in the slightest.”

Rahnis looked round at him, brow wrinkled with confusion. “ _Now_ , you confess?”

He shook his head. “Of course not. Sonaldra thinks better of you than you deserve, that's all. You didn't simply misinterpret my actions, you maliciously twisted them beyond all recognition!”

He shoved her disdainfully aside and addressed the other Weyrwomen. “We've all lost loved ones over the turns. She lost her weyrmate and her weyrmate's child in quick succession, and it damaged her mind deeply.”

Beside him, Rahnis gave an outraged gasp. _Good_ , he thought to Ormaith before continuing.

“She's not the first to suffer crippling loss – we're dragonriders, and it's one of the many burdens we bear. Nor is she the first to try to shift the blame for such tragedy. I didn't _like_ her choice to blame me, but I do understand it, and I've done my utmost over the last months to help her come to terms with her loss.”

Sh'vek gave Sonaldra a rueful grimace. “That she was timing... _yes_ , I was aware of it. Her competence isn't in doubt, and I truly believed she could be one of the best Weyrwomen the High Reaches has ever seen...until I learned what _else_ she was capable of. She was so determined to seize control of this Weyr that she was willing to murder _my_ Maenida – and Kiath – to do so. You've heard her reasons for her actions, today. Her excuses. I'll admit that I, too, saw some cold logic to them at the time. But what else could I do, other than hope that her concerns for the Weyr were steeped in _genuine_ compassion, even for Maenida herself?

“I've never been more wrong in my life.”

He glanced back at Rahnis, slightly perturbed by her silence; he'd expected to have at least _some_ semblance of a fight from her. Her eyes were glazed and she wore a sick expression, barely registering his attention at all. Sh'vek shook his head and coaxed his growing smile into one of sad regret. “Rahnis. Rahnis, I had _so_ much compassion for your plight. Seeing you there amidst the horror of Maenida's death, I thought you as broken by grief as I was. Bereft of your queen while she jumped _between_ times, your weyrmate a ruined, dragon-lost murderer...but at least the corrupting influence of his ambition was done with.”

“Rahnis?” Biarta asked urgently. “Sh'vek, is she all right?”

“Holshayth says there's no reason for concern,” Sonaldra said, though she didn't sound particularly convinced.

_Ormaith?_

_She talks to her queen,_ the dragon said. _And Alaireth bespeaks Trath._

Rahnis frowned slightly, but offered no further protest, even when he reached out to take hold of her arms, forcing her to face him full on. _Warn Holshayth that Alaireth's planning something,_ he asked his bronze, certain that he could goad Rahnis into doing something foolish enough to finish her. If he could make her urge her queen to rebellion...surely she had to be considering that option, now! Alaireth might be strong, but the others together would be easily sufficient to put a stop to anything she tried.

He lowered his voice, applying every Harper-trick of tone and inflection that he'd observed over the turns. “When you broke down, begging for his life, begging for your own forgiveness...I believed you meant it. You might no longer deserve the rank your queen would inevitably claim on your behalf, but I thought that at least you'd serve the Weyr dutifully, with no further motive to do harm in the search for greater power. I would have _helped_ you, however I could, to atone for your failings and to make amends for your crimes. Your honest confession was the first step on that path, and I would have been there with you, supporting you, for the sake of this Weyr, my beloved Maenida's legacy! But then your queen returned, bringing Trath back with her, and you abandoned your shallow remorse.”

He bowed his head and let out a long, low sigh. “You can't conceal your guilt from her forever, Rahnis. The longer you try, the more it will poison you both. Accept your loss, accept what you've done, and try to make amends. I understand how difficult it must be, but you can't live in this denial forever.”

Her head snapped up and she stared him sharply in the eyes. “No. Nor can you.”

 

 

 


	43. Chapter 43

_They say it is an honour_   
_To be called upon to Stand_   
_The worthiest of many_   
_Born to safeguard lives and land_   
_That I who loved you from your birth_   
_Should bravely bear the cost_   
_My son, my peerless dragonman_   
_Oh, my heart is dragon-lost_

_They say you died together_   
_That you did not suffer long_   
_That your love for one another_   
_Was too great to live alone_   
_That lives and lands were spared today_   
_That you bravely bore the cost_   
_But I, your grieving mother_   
_Oh, my heart is dragon-lost_

 

**Late morning, 17.3.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

 

“I understand how difficult it must be,” Sh'vek said, his voice dripping with false compassion, “but you can't live in this denial forever.”

Another time, Rahnis might have laughed at the irony, but she was too exhausted, first by despair, then by relief, to do so now. “No. Nor can you,” she said with quiet determination. “This ends _now_ , Sh'vek. No more lies. They might be the least of your crimes, against me and Maenida and the Weyr you were supposed to serve, but by Faranth they _will_ be your last.”

His grip on her arms tightened painfully, and his face grew momentarily distracted. “Say what you wish, Rahnis; it's your peers you needed to convince.”

 _Ormaith asks the other queens to stop me if I try anything,_ Alaireth told her. _He thinks I'll need to fight him, that this Weyr is his or Linnebith's instead of mine. He's more fortunate than he realises._

Rahnis was tempted to ask her queen to punish the bronze anyway. She'd always expected Sh'vek to lie, and to lie well. But how a fellow dragonrider could ever do so with such conviction, let alone act with such blatant cruelty towards another, she'd truly struggled to comprehend. Greed and hubris weren't uncommon flaws among the blooded Holdfolk, but they held no appeal for hatchling dragons. That didn't mean dragonriders were perfect people – far from it, in her own experience – but it was rare indeed to meet one for whom compassion, empathy and a self-sacrificing nature were completely absent. What she should have realised sooner was that even Sh'vek was no exception to that rule. The lies he'd spoken, the malice that drove him to act as he had...now, at long last, she could see the truths of his heart embedded deeply in them both.

Love. Loss. Crippling guilt. A parent's love and attachment for their offspring was one of the few things that could keep a rider sane in the face of dragonloss, but what happens to the rider who loses a beloved child? How hard had pride and dread warred within him from the moment his son Impressed, knowing that the boy he loved would face the deadly peril of Thread within a matter of turns, that it would fall to him as their Weyrlingmaster to give A'minek and his dragon the skills they needed to stay alive? What had it done to Sh'vek, the day they'd died _between_ , in spite of – or because of – everything he'd taught them? Too much love, and too deep and cutting a loss. A guilt that had crippled him, poisoning his mind more and more with every passing turn, while Sh'vek's hate for the man he'd blamed in his own place grew. The force and tenacity with which he clung to his power...it wasn't done for the love of power itself, but from a terrifying need to remain in control: strong, flawless and therefore blameless, for as long as he could keep his conviction from faltering. He'd never let go of his grief, never accepted his loss, and had clung to his animosity towards F'ren as the last link to the life his son might have had. She couldn't fight his malice or those turns of hate with any rational argument. But she _could_ put a stop to it. The festering wound in his spirit, that had tainted an entire Weyr for the best part of two decades, could yet be lanced, and left to heal.

Sh'vek had loved his son. Everything he'd become since then, warped by grief beyond even a dragon's ability to counter – the same tragic mental state he'd attempted to score her with – all of it had its roots in that one, singular fact. And it hadn't stopped with him. F'ren had become tangled up with it right from the start, followed by his wingriders, and then by Rahnis herself. She'd never known she had it in her to hate another person as viscerally as she did right now. He didn't deserve the bargain she was about to offer him, could never merit such a gift, not after what he'd done to them all. A better woman would pity him. She wanted to _hurt_ him – and she hated him for that, too.

“I don't need to convince them of anything, Sh'vek,” she said, glaring at him. “Not any more.”

Sh'vek gave her a feral grin. “Try it, Rahnis.”

 _Maybe we_ should _put him in his place first,_ she thought indignantly.

 _No,_ Alaireth said firmly. _You do not need that, dearest Rahnis. What we will do, we do for our Weyr, not him, mending the hate that has marred it, before it mars us in turn._ _The boy was greatly loved, and not by Ormaith's rider alone. Think of that. Saving him is within our power, and the risks are not beyond us._

_They're still pretty fardling high!_

_What else can we do? See the Weyr torn apart? You want that no more than I do. If we have any other option at all, it would be wrong not to try it._ Alaireth sent a burst of warm reassurance. _Trath says his rider can definitely supply us with a good enough visual._

That was a start. Stifling her reluctance to speak to him at all, Rahnis told Sh'vek what she expected from him. “I'll do better than _try_ , Sh'vek. You're going to give this Conclave your full confession.”

His smile grew more mocking. “I think not.”

Shells, she'd be glad to see the back of him! “You'll admit the truth of what you did to me, what you _knew_ about Maenida's condition, and confirm everything I've told the other Weyrwomen today. Do that, and as soon as we're through here....” Rahnis paused, letting her words hang until he gave a sign that she had his full attention. Sonaldra was frowning at her, but she'd lost all patience with the other woman's opinion.

“You'll _what_?” Sh'vek asked at last.

“I'd like to know that, too!” Sonaldra added. “I won't stand to hear any threats coming from either one of you.”

Ignoring Sonaldra, Rahnis spoke slowly, with all the confidence and determination she knew she'd have to draw on later, if she and Alaireth were to succeed in what they were about to do. “I will take Alaireth _between_ nineteen turns, to the where and the when your son was lost _between._ ”

The smile on Sh'vek's face grew fixed, and his eyes glinted with a fierce, desperate hunger that recalled the depths of dragonlust to her mind. “And?”

 _We_ can _do this,_ Alaireth reassured Rahnis, even as she spoke.

“And, I swear on Alaireth's life, on the shells of every dragon she's ever clutched, that we will do _everything_ within our power to return A'minek and his dragon, alive, to this time and this Weyr.”

Sh'vek closed his eyes and made a small sound halfway between a sigh and a laugh, quiet enough that it was almost drowned out by the surprised noises from the table, and Sonaldra's continuing complaints.

“I don't approve of coercion, Rahnis, not when it's as blatant as that!” Sonaldra said above the voices of the other Weyrwomen, oblivious to the logical flaw in her own words.

Rahnis bit her tongue. _Faranth, Alaireth, how did such a deadglow ever end up Senior for Fort? No wonder Jassily and Trebbiath get away with as much as they do!_

“Sh'vek, you'll pay no heed to her,” Sonaldra continued. “I know the idea must tempt you, but what she's proposing is frankly impossible!”

Sh'vek gave a nod, but Rahnis didn't think it was in response to anything Sonaldra had said; he surely wouldn't be so quick to give up on a chance like this. “You know Alaireth and I can do this, Sh'vek,” she said softly. “After all that's happened, you must have guessed it was possible.”

“Well before you did,” he murmured. “You set a high price on my son's life, woman.”

 _Not half so high as he does,_ Alaireth said.

At the table, Granatia raised a spare hooked needle and waggled it in the air, the movement drawing Rahnis' eyes. “It's easy as anything to pick up a dropped stitch if you see it happen, but it does get harder if you have to unpick your work to get there.”

Irdana threw her hands up in the air. “Faranth, have you gone _completely_ deaf, Granatia?”

“How I long for the day,” she said dryly, before turning to Serreni in the seat beside her. “I expect nineteen turns will be _very_ heavy work, and I'd sooner live with the hole than unravel such a large swathe of a pattern...but isn't it an exciting idea? You know Rahnis and her dragon better than any of us, Serreni. Do you think they're up to the attempt?”

“Whether it's possible or not is quite irrelevant,” Sonaldra snapped.

Serreni shrugged, and answered anyway. “I wouldn't wager many Marks on it.”

“Five says they can.” Biarta fished a large wooden token out of her belt-pouch, and made it dance between her fingers. “Will you match me, Serreni?”

“ _Any_ Marks,” the Istan weyrwoman corrected. “I'm not _quite_ as crass as that.”

Outraged, Biarta slammed her fist down on the table. “Are you _insulting_ me?”

“Do you need to _ask_?”

Sonaldra's attempts to arrest the women's bickering only added to the noise. Rahnis did her best to ignore them, concentrating instead on the battle being waged inside Sh'vek's mind. Far sooner than she expected, Alaireth sent word.

_Ormaith asks how certain we can be of succeeding._

Not certain at all, was the honest answer. “It's not without risk to Alaireth and me,” Rahnis told him. “I can't even promise our own survival, but I wouldn't risk Alaireth if I didn't think we had a good chance of succeeding. Do what I ask of you, and you have my word I'll do this for you in return.”

Sh'vek looked unconvinced. “What kind of guarantee is that?”

“An honest one.” She might have lied to him, but after her failures with M'ton and Narnoth she doubted he'd have believed that any better. “It's either this, or we throw the whole Weyr into strife.”

Sh'vek's gaze sharpened. “You'd seize this Weyr by force, would you?” he said, his tone accusing.

It didn't surprise her at all that he'd expected such a thing from her; he was probably entertaining similar ideas himself. It would have been her choice of last resort, had he succeeded in turning the Weyrwomen against her today, but she was sure that she'd have come to regret such action deeply. She didn't like to think about how close it had come to that, how lucky she'd been that Sh'vek himself had shown her how he might be defeated. But, lucky or not, it was past time she made it clear where he stood. “Personally, I think Alaireth's more than strong and fast enough to squeeze Ormaith like a redfruit before the other queens can stop her.” Sh'vek might have the physical strength to break her just as easily – the pain of his grip on her arms attested to that – but he was impotent to apply it. She meant to drive that message home. “Shall we see if I'm right?”

“Weyrwoman Rahnis!” Sonaldra's disapproval couldn't have been more clear.

Rahnis blanked her. “Or shall we _set aside our differences long enough to save your son's life_? That offer won't stay open forever, Sh'vek,” she warned, holding his gaze with her own.

“Rahnis, you WILL be silent!” Sonaldra insisted loudly. “I want _everyone_ to be silent, so we can bring this meeting back to proper order!”

Sure enough, Rahnis felt Alaireth coming under pressure from the Fort queen to make her comply, but Holshayth's will was sorely lacking in substance, and Alaireth easily shrugged it aside. Rahnis met Sh'vek's troubled stare and matched it, until he lowered his eyes and looked away. In the corner of her eyes, she saw the Fort Weyrwoman rising from her chair.

“I wasn't completely convinced either way before this,” Sonaldra said, “but your behaviour, Rahnis, pressuring the man like this-”

“ _Is hardly comparable to my own!_ ” Sh'vek shouted back at her.

He pushed Rahnis roughly away, hard enough that she almost fell. She rubbed at her arms, hoping that the man's unlikely support was indeed the first part of the concessions she'd asked of him. _Have we done it, Alaireth? Is this it?_

Sh'vek twisted on the spot, one fist pressed against his skull, torn between staring back at her with a look of hateful appeal and addressing the women at the table; even Sonaldra had fallen into a stunned silence at his words.

“Which one of _you_ could push me so hard that I needed to resort to threats of dragonloss?” he asked the Weyrwomen scornfully, before turning furiously back to her and saying: “Scorch it, Rahnis, this is _my Weyr.”_

She shook her head. He might have led it through almost half a Pass, but a true Weyrleader was owned by his Weyr, not the other way around. If the Weyr belonged to anyone, it had been Maenida's and Kiath's, not his, and now it was Alaireth's.

 _Don't speak,_ Alaireth warned her. _He's made his choice._

“My Weyr, Rahnis,” Sh'vek repeated. “Everything I've done since I lost him, I've done for this Weyr. All the hard choices, all the riders and dragons that have lived or died on my orders...I knew I couldn't protect them all, any more than I could protect my own son! But I kept _Pern_ safe, and you won't take that from me.”

What little joy she'd been feeling, believing she was on the verge of victory, rapidly soured in the face of the futile despair his words evoked. How many lives had been squandered over the turns to that end, simply because Sh'vek couldn't or wouldn't bring himself to care enough to fight for them? He'd already lost his son: the lives of other riders and dragons were a pittance in comparison, and all too easily sacrificed. Even if Alaireth _did_ spare A'minek and Cassonth from their deaths, there'd be no changing the two decades in between. “No, I _can't_ take that from you, Sh'vek.” But, by Faranth, she wished she could!

“Everything I did to you, it only happened because _you_ forced my hand,” he accused.

She didn't dispute the lie. “Maenida suffered far more than I,” she reminded him.

The last of his ferocity deserted him, and a look of sheer exhaustion took its place. “Maenida,” he breathed, almost seeming broken. “Pitiful Faranth, _Maenida_. Her, I failed.”

He turned back to the table, forcing his bearing back into an attentive stance that no Weyrlingmaster could fault from his charges, speaking as if he was offering a simple report, not a confession. “Maenida never questioned me. Never failed me. She did everything the Weyr needed and anything I asked. And I left her to die alone. She deserved far better of me than that. They both did. Rynder's skilled, but he's no dragonhealer. I should've been making Kiath chew stone every few sevendays from Turnover on, if not before...but I truly believed her rising might help them both.”

Sh'vek's face twisted into a wry grimace. “That, or it would kill them both. I hoped they'd live, but I _expected_ them to die, and to reap the benefit either way. Had M'arsen not stopped Rahnis, the Weyr would have been spared a great deal of trauma. “F'ren...” he broke off, struggling with his words; absolving the bronzerider was clearly a step too far. “Is that damning enough for you, Rahnis? ”

It was enough. Oh, it was! Relief threatening to overwhelm her, she reached for Alaireth's mind. _We've done it. Thank Faranth, we've_ done _it!_

“You're saying that Rahnis' account was _accurate_?” Sonaldra asked in a low voice. “I want Ormaith's confirmation that you're not acting under duress, that you're telling us the truth now.”

Sh'vek gave a hollow laugh. “Weyrwoman Rahnis has been acting under duress ever since Kiath rose. Whatever else you want from me, Holshayth can go ahead and take it.”

Sonladra seemed vaguely perturbed by the prospect. Rahnis wondered if it was accepting a hard truth that bothered the woman, or the fact that Sonaldra didn't like being wrong. _Shells, Alaireth! I knew she could be thick-tailed about rank and rules and traditions, I knew she took her time making her mind up...but to stick to a decision so rigidly, no matter the evidence to the contrary?_

 _It will be a warm day_ between _before_ that _Weyrwoman admits to a mistake,_ Alaireth agreed.

Whether Sonaldra was willing to admit to her own mistake or not was a moot point; Ormaith's meek affirmation of Sh'vek's guilt was witnessed by every queen present.

“I expected better of you than that, bronzerider,” Sonaldra said, pursing her lips and fiddling with her pen and a scrap of cloth. “You've wasted a great deal of our time, today!”

 _That_ was what she took most issue with? Rahnis let out a short, hard laugh, too aghast to stop herself. Before that morning – afternoon, now – she'd expected Serreni to be the one to try stymieing things, not Sonaldra, but Sonaldra hadn't been half as sympathetic to her plight as she'd hoped. Serreni, on the other hand, looked quite shaken by her father's revelations. However she felt about Sh'vek now, she certainly wasn't blind to how the currents had shifted. Granatia's expression was one of sad disappointment, Irdana wore a look of calculation, and Biarta appeared ready to flame Sh'vek down to specks of char on the spot. She caught Rahnis' eye, and nodded.

 _Ondarth says her rider approves of our idea about the redfruit, and they'll gladly offer their assistance,_ Alaireth said.

_I'd rather Ondarth didn't...but thank her, anyway._

Sonaldra dipped her pen back in its well, then steadily set it to the hide in front of her. “Bronzerider Sh'vek. This council was not summoned in judgement of _your_ crimes. It seems we must accept that you did indeed fail in your duties, and that you behaved with gross inappropriateness towards Weyrwoman Rahnis. Nevertheless, it constitutes an internal matter. Suitable consequences for your conduct would be better determined by your own Weyrleaders.”

“And who are they?” Serreni asked. “Rahnis asked us to confirm her in her rank. As yet, we haven't done so.”

“Are you asking, or Vallenka?” Rahnis countered.

Serreni gave a noncommittal shrug. “You're hardly _blameless_ for what happened before Kiath's death. Faranth, you admitted as much yourself!” She paused, and in the silence Alaireth relayed a message from Serreni's queen.

 _Minith has a message for us from Carth,_ Alaireth said _. Carth's rider sends her congratulations, and she accepts our offer of assistance in resolving the Nerat issue. She says the price will be higher for us, but we've sharding well earned it._

 _I see._ _Serreni's going to insist on a vote, then milk it for all it's worth, isn't she? And Vallenka expects us to_ help _her with it? Tell Carth direct that I want Sh'vek transferred to Telgar, not Ista. If she wants to bargain, she can start there._

“Anyway,” Serreni continued, “you asked us to decide if your actions were appropriate for a senior Weyrwoman. And I say they weren't.”

Biarta was quick to her defence. “And I say they were!”

“ _Enough_ , Serreni.” Sh'vek's voice was hard. “It's _done_.” The complex knots of a Weyrleader weren't readily removed, and he took his time over them. “Alaireth rose with my foreknowledge and approval, and the High Reaches will prosper better under her than Delene. Confirm her as Weyrwoman and be done with it.”

At the head of the table, Sonaldra crossed her arms. “We've not voted yet. There are _forms_ to be adhered to. At the very least, we need to review which parts of the case against her seniority are still at issue.”

“Then get on with it, woman!” Sh'vek snapped; his patience with the Fort Weyrwoman had clearly worn as thin as Rahnis' own. “She'll only claim the place in spite of you if you don't confirm her, and I'd rather have my son back before that happens.” Leaving the women to settle matters in their own time, Sh'vek looked intently back at Rahnis. “You would have done it, wouldn't you?”

She knew it would haunt her, how close they'd come to making the dragons of the Weyr choose sides. “There are worse choices we could have made.”

“And if we'd caught you anyway?”

It was the price and the privilege of being Weyrwoman: to accept the man whose dragon flew your own, and to have some say in the choice of who he was. The abilities of man and dragon, and the collective will of the Weyr, each factored equally as much as the preferences of queen and Weyrwoman, to the extent that some argued that they favoured the best bronze pair for the job far more than the preferences of queen and weyrwoman did. It was in the rejection of suitors that gold and rider held the most sway. But, had she failed to remove Sh'vek as Weyrleader by that means, it would have set a dangerous precedent to seek an alternative. Few traditions were wisely set aside, and certainly not on the basis of one woman's opinion alone. “Then you'd have had a turn, if you were lucky,” Rahnis answered truthfully.

He coiled the lengths of cord that had made up his rank knots loosely between his hands. “If you renege on this now,” he murmured, quiet enough not to be heard by the women conversing at the table, “I _will_ kill you.”

Sh'vek's words sent a chill down her spine. He might be powerless to actually hurt her, but that didn't make the malice behind his threat any less real.

“Ormaith says you have a visual already?” he continued, as if his last statement had been nothing of any consequence at all.

“F'ren has one for me,” she said, feeling uneasy.

“Yes, I thought he might be your source. It's precise?”

“So Alaireth tells me.”

“I suppose we can come up with a better one if it's not.”

Rahnis raised her brows. “We?”

“You don't think I'm letting you do this alone, _unwitnessed_?”

Perhaps it _had_ been too much to ask, that he'd trust her to keep her word. She certainly wouldn't do so for him.

“F'ren will be coming too,” Sh'vek added. “His visual, he can sharding well share the risk.”

“F'ren's in no state to-” Rahnis stopped, interrupted by Sonaldra's cough. “Weyrwoman?”

“Rahnis, rider of gold Alaireth,” Fort's Weyrwoman stated formally. “Are you willing to abide by the verdict of this Conclave?”

Judging by the sour look on Sonaldra's face, she no longer had anything to lose by doing so. “I am.”

“Very good. We will vote first on whether or not to confirm you in your seniority. After that, we will decide upon which of the standard penalties would be appropriate consequences for the unlawful action you took in hastening your queen's Flight.”

After Carth's message, Rahnis had known that that would be a part of it. The first vote was quickly resolved, as she'd expected, and unanimous in her favour, which had surprised her. It was the second decision that dragged: the initial runner-trading lasted the best part of an hour, and she was close to grinding her teeth in frustration – poor old Granatia had actually nodded off with boredom – well before it came to the vote.

“Then it's settled!” Sonaldra declared. “In recompense for the clear breaches of tradition by Weyrwoman Rahnis, High Reaches Weyr will award junior weyrwoman Delene a doubled stipend and relieve her of half her formal duties.”

Rahnis smothered a smile; she and Delene would both come out ahead on that one.

“In addition to this, the Weyr will transfer a full Wing's worth of unranked dragons to Igen Weyr before the month is out. The increase to Igen's fighting strength is much needed and well overdue, and therefore the balance of Keroon's Hold and Crafthall tithes to Igen and Ista will be adjusted in Igen's favour to accommodate it. Ista Weyr's generosity will be matched by Benden: the protection of Nerat, from the peninsula tip to the southern border of Half Circle Seahold, is henceforth given over to Ista, alongside the Nerat tithes in full.”

Biarta looked as pleased by boundary-change clauses as Serreni and Irdana did; Telgar Weyr might not benefit directly, but nor would she as its Weyrwoman be forced to suffer through any more interminable, vitriolic debates. The loss of so many dragons would leave the Weyr stretched for a while, Rahnis knew, but there was a world of difference between a Wing and a _Wing's worth_. She and O'reb would have the choice of which riders and dragons were lost, which would surely play to his advantage in consolidating his position. And it was unlikely that the High Reaches would be flying wing-light for very long – the other Weyrs would certainly take advantage of the opportunity to see their less desirable riders welcomed by the High Reaches.

Sonaldra moved on to the next clause. “Four bronze- or brown-riders ranked Wingsecond or higher will also take transfers, two to Igen and one each to Fort and Benden. Bronze rider Sh'vek will transfer to Ista Weyr within the day.”

That, too, would help smooth over the transition of power. That Serreni had insisted on an Istan transfer for Sh'vek hardly mattered at all, not so long as he departed soon and never returned.

“As we have no wish to leave this Weyr disadvantaged in its pool of bronzes,” Sonaldra continued, “Gold Alaireth's next mating flight will be opened to ranking bronzes from the other Weyrs, with no more than three from each to participate.”

Rahnis had requested a veto as well as a restriction on numbers, but had been overruled. Even so, an open flight had been a far easier sacrifice to make than the Wing of dragons gifted to Igen. If F'ren couldn't prove himself up to the challenge, she was sure it wouldn't happen at the Weyr's expense. The last clause, however, was.

“Finally, to further foster diversity in the Weyrs' breeding dragons, the next High Reaches goldrider to complete her weyrling training will also transfer to Igen, in exchange for junior weyrwoman Larren and her queen Trikinth.”

Trikinth was Igen's youngest gold, but at twenty-four turns of age she was already past her prime.

 _But I'm not,_ Alaireth said, picking up on her rider's thoughts. _And nor is Linnebith. Between us, we shall surely see all Pern supplied with dragons of our clutching._

Rahnis suppressed a smile. She didn't think Alaireth would be half as accommodating when the time came to share the Sands with Delene's queen. _And how will that improve the diversity of the dragon population, dearest?_

After that, the vote itself was merely a formality. “Heard and witnessed!” Sonaldra declared, as Granatia added the final vote of assent. She smiled, proudly, as if any one of the ideas posited through the course of the discussion had been her own. “What a productive day this has turned out to be!”

“It's not over yet.” Sh'vek pushed himself away from the wall, from where he'd been standing and watching almost unnoticed over the course of the past hour. “Time to make good on your word, Weyrwoman Rahnis. My son has waited for this more than long enough.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the plot comes full circle. Kick yourself if you didn't see this coming. ;-)


	44. Chapter 44

_So sweet, she was, her beauty new_   
_the day I saw her first_   
_Her voice a song, her steps a dance_   
_how tender was her every glance._   
_How well she bore the turns since then_   
_as lover, mother, wife and friend_   
_How fresh her beauty, even now_   
_the day I saw her last._   
_Her name a kiss upon my lips_   
_and in my aged heart_

 

**Early afternoon, 17.3.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

 

Some memories, F'ren knew, would be with him for the rest of his life. The day he'd been Searched. The indescribable moment he'd Impressed Trath. Their first flight together, and his dragon's first flames. Waiting, sick with anticipation, for L'sard to give the signal that would send Cloudburst _between_ to meet Thread. The rest of their first threadfall in the fighting Wings had been lost to the excitement and confusion of that day, but that memory was still almost as clear in his mind as the hideous moment of Trath's first score, six sevendays later.

There were other days, other moments of their lives that stood out – both good and bad – but the passage of time inevitably blurred the details. Travelling _between_ times, from the present moment to a point more than  nineteen turns in the past, on the basis of his fallible human recall alone, ought to have been too risky to even contemplate.

F'ren closed his eyes, and remembered.

A'minek had been one of the older weyrlings. Strong and capable, he'd been growing increasingly frustrated with the pace of their training, and with how impossible his father was to please. Sh'vek hadn't made weyrlinghood easy for any of them. L'gin, one of Sh'vek's assistants, had explained to them both time and time again that bronzeriders were always held to higher standards than the rest...but it had often seemed that even complete perfection would have fallen far short of the mark as far as A'minek's training went. During the last few sevendays of A'minek's life, the weyrlings had spent most days flying the simplest rope-drills close to the Weyr, with no regard to the weather, and the dragons rarely allowed to flame. F'ren had hated it almost as much as A'minek had at the time, but all the turns of threadfighting since then had changed his perspective greatly. It was rare for more than half the members of a class to survive beyond their first five turns, and Trath's siblings had proved no exception. Sh'vek had never meant for them to master those final drills perfectly. It was threadfall that mattered, and threadfall was far less predictable than weyrling exercises. They might have been close to the end of their training...but over-confidence was a common flaw in the riders that never returned from their first Threadfall, and any dragonpair could blink into the path of a stray thread missed by their wingmates, no matter how well they flew. He and Trath had drawn on the instincts honed by those repetitious, paint-streaked drills more times than he could count, and he knew they'd saved both their lives on several occasions.

But for A'minek and Cassonth, none of Sh'vek's actions as Weyrlingmaster had been enough to keep them alive. If A'minek could be brought forward to the present day.... F'ren wondered, briefly, if A'minek and Cassonth would evade Thread long enough to live even _one_ of the turns they'd missed: there was no predicting who would be lucky enough to survive as long as he himself had. But whatever his boyhood friend's future held, it was the past that F'ren needed to concern himself with for now. He'd promised Rahnis a visual precise enough to take her queen safely back through turns of time, but even the slightest flaw might instead send her to a cold death _between._ The lives of two other queens already weighed heavily on his conscience, there: Kiath, driven to suicide by his murder of Maenida, and Dilvith, Audrealle's queen, lost in weyrlinghood alongside A'minek and Cassonth. 

_She trusts you,_ Trath said.

F'ren glanced over his shoulder and gave his dragon a wry smile. _Rahnis doesn't have much choice._ Other than not to go at all...but after giving her word to try it, he didn't think she'd be easy to dissuade from making the attempt, not even if O'reb  _did_ decide to veto the whole endeavour. F'ren had already briefed the Weyrleader on the basics of the plan while they'd been waiting for Rahnis and the others to join them in the Weyrbowl, and O'reb had – quite correctly – warned F'ren that he'd be withholding his judgement until he had a better idea of the risks. Even with the visual F'ren had in mind, they were still sizeable...although not insurmountable, not if he was careful enough about it.

“You all know the dangers of timing,” he began. Sh'vek certainly did, and F'ren assumed the same was true of Sonaldra of Fort and Granatia of Benden, present as witnesses at Rahnis' invitation. “A perfect visual isn't enough. If it matches one point in time, but the dragonpair _thinks_ they're trying for another, the conflict between time, place and purpose can easily prove fatal. If we're going to do this....” 

“Which we are!” Sh'vek insisted vehemently, his features set in a mask of grim determination. He might have lost everything that day, except for that one slim hope, but for a beaten man he certainly didn't _look_ very much like one. No, with his son's life in the balance, Sh'vek would keep fighting until his very last breath.

F'ren crossed his arms and matched him, stare for stare.  _Can you ask Mannifeth again if O'reb's sure we can't keep him out of this?_ he asked Trath. He hadn't been at all pleased to learn that the former Weyrleader planned on accompanying Rahnis into the past, and Sh’vek’s tense, desperate aura was playing strangely on his nerves. “If we're going to do this,” he repeated, “that sense of time, of  _when_ , needs to be equally as secure as the visual itself.”

_Alaireth answers,_ Trath said _. Rahnis says he'll only make his own way back, and she'll be far happier_ knowing  _where and when he is._

_That's...yeah. Good point._

“There's still the problem of remembering a specific point in the past well enough to revisit it!” Weyrwoman Sonaldra looked even more doubtful than she sounded.

“Oh, let him get to that part in his own time, Sonaldra.” Granatia smiled reassuringly at him, her head tilted to one side. “You've got a good grip on the theory, haven't you? And the look of a man who probably had to learn it the hard way, eh?”

A painfully accurate remark, that, but F'ren let it slide, if only for the ghost of a smile that briefly brightened the grave expression on Rahnis' face. “We'll be going back to the fifth day after Turnover, in the sixteenth turn of the Pass; the same day Kiath rose to mate. We – the weyrlings, that is – left the Weyr early that morning, well before Kiath rose, to fly drills on the Boll coast. Audrealle's queen, Dilvith, was still too young to respond to Kiath herself, but that wasn't true of the rest of the clutch, especially the greens. The first of the them had risen a few days earlier, and several of the male dragons been mature enough to take an interest even as weyrlings. Not all of them, mind. A'minek and Cassonth were in the former group. When Kiath rose, they followed Sh'vek and Ormaith back to the Weyr.”

The sheer audacity of the attempt had been thrilling to contemplate, even knowing how unlikely it was that his friend would succeed. L'gin had half-heartedly threatened the rest of them with running drills if they couldn't keep their minds off it...but the High Reaches were a long way from Southern Boll and their dragons were still immature enough that the appeal of cavorting in the surf had proved an effective distraction for the others.

He and Audrealle had made their own.

At the time, he'd believed it the second best day of his life. He'd long admired Audrealle – idolised her, even – thinking her a woman grown, poised and mature and beautiful and very much out of his reach. Audrealle: a short girl of eighteen turns, prettier than average, but also flighty, manipulative and self-centred, and as driven by emotion as every other weyrling. He'd been an awkward boy of fifteen, growing almost as fast as his dragon and wearing cast-off clothes that had always seemed either too long or too short. The shallow gift of Audrealle's loving had been meant for A'minek, not for him; that she barely cared for him at all had been even more humiliating than the ease with which she had used him.

Shame, betrayal and humiliation, fuelled by the heat of a warm winter's day in the south and the half-sensed echoes of a rising queen's lust. Scarred like that, it was hardly surprising that it had taken turns before he'd properly trusted another person again. Sex had become a purely physical thing, happening on his terms as and when he and his partner desired it, with true intimacy reserved for Trath alone. His dragon had been equally protective of his rider's heart; F'ren had long suspected that his dragon's preference for male-ridden greens dated back to that time.

One single day, a very long time ago. And the worst had still been to come.

“F'ren?” Rahnis prompted.

He'd been silent too long, lost in his reflections. Sh'vek was staring at him with fervent animosity, almost certainly haunted by memories of his own. “Sorry,” F'ren said, rolling the tension out of his shoulders. “So. I'll start with the conditions. The weather was good. Bright sun, a few high wisps of cloud, but none of the usual haze you get in Boll.”

He pictured his former home in his mind: Gar Hold, not as it was now, but as it had been back then. A turn and a half spent in the High Reaches as a weyrling had changed him inexorably. He would never find the southern heat as oppressive as some High Reaches riders did, but even after so short a time away from it, the Hold of his birth had seemed a far smaller place than when he'd left. Gar Hold's fire heights might accommodate a handful of dragons at most, while the full extent of his childhood explorations along coast and up canyon could be overflown in a matter of minutes on dragonback; overgrown with profligate greenery, it was hardly a sight that would impress anyone, least of all a dragonrider. It certainly no longer looked like home. He added the recollection of those thoughts to the image in his mind, which sharpened further and became layered with the remembered smells of ocean and smoke, and the feel of the cold, stiff wind blowing down from the north.

Satisfied that he had the visual clear in his own mind, F'ren started describing the details to Rahnis, so she'd know how trustworthy the different aspects of the visual were. “The Holders were clearing forest for new fields somewhere to the northwest; there's smoke drifting up from beyond the Hold, but I can't place it accurately. At the time mark we'll be using, the weyrlings and their dragons will all be on the beach – the longer sandy stretch south of the breakwater and the Hold proper – with L'gin and blue Felhith. Our dragons were twenty-two months old, and there were twenty-two pairs left from our clutch: one gold, two bronzes, five browns, five blues and nine greens.” It was dangerous being too specific with such things, but neither Rahnis nor Alaireth had ever met the dragons in question, and often even unused knowledge of a few key details could help hold a visual true. “Felhith had an old score across his tail, just above the fork. Dilvith was fellis-gold. Cassonth and Trath were a pair, and barely anyone could tell them apart from a distance.”

“I could,” Sh'vek said. “Cassonth was longer in the wing.”

“He was, wasn't he?” F'ren cautiously agreed. “And his headknobs were more even; Trath's stayed lopsided for turns.”

“So they did.”

There was a desperate, feverish look to Sh'vek's eyes. It was obvious how much the prospect of seeing his son alive again consumed him, enough to hold all the hate and resentment at bay...but they wouldn't stay hidden forever, F'ren knew. He couldn't doubt Sh'vek's motivation, but nor could he shake off the troubling sense of unease that the man's presence evoked in him.

As if prompted by his thought, Sh'vek gave him as spiteful a look as he'd ever received, and said: “Your dragon was too big for his shell. Perhaps that's why he made such a poor Impression.”

Behind F'ren, Trath snarled. _Easy now,_ F'ren thought. _We both know how desperate he is._ “ You can always try coming up with your own visual if you'd rather.”

Sonaldra of Fort smoothly inserted herself between him and Sh'vek, but it was Granatia who spoke first. “Being too big for their shells is a common problem with bronzes,” she noted, “ _and_ their riders.”

“Continue with your description please, F'ren,” Sonaldra added, not to be outdone.

_Holshayth asks that you do not antagonise Ormaith's rider. She reminds me that when this is done they will be Ista Weyr's problem, not ours._

_He should be grateful that we're doing this at all, shard it._ F'ren took a deep breath, and concentrated once again on his image of his former home. “Faranth! Just be aware that the dragons are there, but don't focus on any details of positioning. Felhith had brought Cassonth and A'minek back from the Weyr as soon as he got word that Cassonth was out of it, and we were all supposed to head back as a Wing once everyone was assembled. Audrealle and I were missing. We'd gone off on our own....”

“The usual reason, I suppose?” Granatia tutted her lips.

They'd hardly been the _first_ pair of weyrlings to indulge their hormonal urges that way. “We had sex, yes. I wasn't her first choice, but A'minek wasn't around. Of course, he had to be the one to find us.”

“You should both have stayed with the others,” Sh'vek muttered.

“We should, yes.” But there was no changing that part of the past. “A'minek found us. We all briefly argued over each other's rights and wrongs, and then he moved on to beating the shit out of me.”

“And you _still_ think it's wrong of me to blame you, don't you?” Sh'vek turned away and lifted his face to the sky, but his voice conveyed his fury well enough. “ _Both_ of you were taught what a rising queen does to a man. What state of mind did you expect him to be in? You knew how he felt about Audrealle, how much he valued you as a friend. _You_ didn't even have the excuse of fighting your dragon's lust. Was it worth it, F'ren? Hurting him so badly that it killed him?”

F'ren had come home that night so badly beaten that the Weyr healer had kept him to his bed for three full days, but A'minek hadn't come home at all. Sh'vek had never forgiven him for it. It had been long turns before he'd been able to forgive himself for what had happened that day, and although there was scarcely a single second of it that F'ren could look back on without regrets, the deaths of A'minek and Audrealle and their dragons no longer plagued him as badly as they once had. “Being an idiot over Audrealle doesn't make it my fault!”

“He was still angry with you when he went _between_ ,” Sh'vek said in a monotone. “Angry and hurt and betrayed. By you.”

“Then he should have stayed where he was long enough to calm himself down.”

Sh'vek gave a strangled gasp, and F'ren sensed Mannifeth pressuring Trath to make him stop talking. The young bronze had strength, but nothing like the experience needed for the task, and both F'ren and Trath easily ignored him. “Like Trath and I did,” he finished, fractionally before Alaireth added her will to that of her new mate.

“Enough, F'ren!” Rahnis said sharply before adding something else in a more conciliatory tone, but Alaireth's presence in his head kept F'ren from comprehending the words.

_He will be bad enough company anyway, Trath's rider,_ the queen said. Still on her old ledge, she rose to her feet and spread her wings in a wide stretch.  _Do not rile him more! You must both stay calm and focused, or you jeopardise us all._

The queen was genuinely worried, he realised.  _Tell her they don't have to do this!_ he asked Trath.  _Not for_ him!

Sighing softly, Rahnis reached up and took his face in her hands. “You're not doing this for Sh'vek's benefit, F'ren. You're doing it for me, for A'minek, and for the good of this whole Weyr. Let the rest of it go.”

The fear was there in her eyes, too. “I'm starting to wish I hadn't promised you this,” he whispered.

“Better than the alternative,” she said as she lowered her arms and stepped away. “Now. Tell them all what you told me. Tell them how we'll all get back there, safely and surely.”

This was what they'd all been waiting to hear, but it was to Rahnis that he addressed himself, even though he'd already shared the outline of his idea with her. “Knowing the where and the when we're aiming for isn't enough on its own, and we were there for too long for the weyrlings to be a good mark, even if I _could_ place us all accurately – which I can't. The marker we'll be using is Trath, trying to get to me before A'minek could hurt me any more than he already had.”

“A ground visual?” O'reb asked. “But you were with Audrealle, you weren't even with him!”

F'ren shook his head. “I couldn't even see him. But I _know_ where he was, and I can reconstruct it well enough to go _between_ on it.”

“You think you can make an accurate visual out of _that_?” Sonaldra asked.

F'ren gave her a wry grin. “Absolutely. Trath didn't realise how far off the path we'd gone, and thought he could push his way through the foliage to reach me. Made a fardling mess of the place, he did, a good ten lengths of flattened plants before he gave up. We had a perfect view of the damage as we left.”

Fort's Weyrwoman frowned. “I _remember_ that! That was you? Well! You might have told us at the time! One of our sweepriders reported it in as a possible stray thread a few days after your weyrlings died, and we spent the next sevenday scouring half of Boll in case there'd been more.”

“It was a bad time,” F'ren said, and Sh'vek nodded. Weyrwoman Perelane had been gravely ill with pneumonia even before Audrealle and A'minek had died, drowning from the inside out and clinging on to Seenth's life more than her own. Dilvith's death had come as a heavy blow to the queen's fighting spirit, and the Weyrwoman had deteriorated fast.

Trath's nudge on his mind brought F'ren back to the task at hand. He pictured the path the dragon had taken, breaching Boll's jungle greenery, and aligned it carefully against the shining white curves of sand and sea and the road that curved around the base of the intervening bluff before sloping up to Gar Hold itself, nestled into the steep limestone of the north face of its river valley. Above it all, the Red Star gleamed in the west like a single drop of blood. _Trath? Got that?_

_I do._

_Good._ “Rahnis, Sh'vek, Trath is passing the image on to Alaireth and Ormaith now. Place him as deeply as he got into the jungle, and focus on it. The others were on the beach, and they'd all have been watching what Trath was doing, so we don't need to worry about being observed when we arrive.” 

_Rahnis isn't satisfied with the visual_ , Trath told him.

She _did_ look even more concerned than before, F'ren realised. “Trath says you're not happy?

“For a jump as far back as this one, I want to be sure it's accurate. Something about it looks....” Rahnis frowned. “I'm not sure, it just doesn't look right to me. Something about the Hold. The shadows, maybe, but I never use them for a constructed visual anyway.”

“It's actually a very good visual,” Sh'vek said. “He might try to send Ormaith astray, but you needn't fear for Alaireth's safety.”

O'reb shot him a doubtful look. “I'd like to know what Weyrwoman Sonaldra thinks of it. Hold Gar looks to Fort, after all.”

“Let me see...ah, I understand the problem,” said Sonaldra. She gave Rahnis a smug smile. “You may be right that the shadows don't match the Gar Hold of today, but it's an excellent match to my memories of Gar from twenty turns back. They quarried more stone from the south face of the bluff in turn nineteen, improving their view in the process. Before then, with winter sun the base of the valley was always darker than the heights.”

“And a lot more stifling in the summer,” F'ren added.

“Then you're satisfied with it, Weyrwoman?” O'reb asked Sonaldra.

“Oh yes.”

“But I'm not,” F'ren said, smiling at the young Weyrleader. “Not yet. I'd like to see their own versions of it. Sh'vek, yours first.”

_Here_ , Trath said, passing the image along.

The details were subtly different – what made a location distinctive differed from rider to rider and dragon to dragon – but it was recognisably the same place, imagined with an equal clarity and sense of certainty as he'd done for himself. The weyrling dragons and the weyrlingmaster's blue were there as a  _presence_ rather than visualised individuals. Similarly, Trath-the-weyrling was placed with only the vaguest sense of posture and action, but fully realised in his state of concerned panic. “It's solid,” he confirmed, knowing that Trath felt the same way. “Rahnis?”

The image in his head blurred and distorted as Alaireth overlaid her own version direct. The Weyrwoman had reduced the emphasis on the details of Hold Gar that she was less confident of, but there was Trath again, forcing his way through the jungle. He corrected the line of the breakwater – it had already been badly eroded when he first Impressed Trath, but had got substantially worse since then – and let Trath return the image to Alaireth. “The breakwater wasn't as bad back then. Apart from that, it's good. I'd take Trath _between_ on either.”

_No you won't,_ Trath said firmly.

_Please, Trath. I know we can do this. I_ want  _to do this._

_No,_ the dragon insisted.  _Not through time. I'll fly you anywhere on Pern, but never through time again. I do not think I could escape from Kiath a second time._

There was nothing but certainty in his dragon's thoughts. _I understand, Trath._ He looked apologetically at Rahnis. “Trath says-”

“I know.” She reached out and placed a hand on his arm. “You don't need to come with me. You can stay here, with Trath.”

“Faranth's egg, he'll do no such thing,” Sh'vek swore. “He's coming with us.”

“I'm not forcing _any_ dragon to come with us, Sh'vek.”

“You agreed he would, Rahnis. You got what you wanted and by Faranth you'll give me this now.”

F'ren knew he didn't share Sh'vek's reasons for it, but he couldn't disagree with the man's instance on his presence. The visual was his, after all.  _Will you trust Alaireth to look after me?_ he asked Trath.

_I have to,_ Trath answered.  _ She is going to go back, and she must not doubt her safety. You will go with her, and you will come back to me. I will call you all back. _

The risks inherent in leaving his dragon behind were terrible to contemplate; F'ren felt overwhelmed by the love and trust in Trath's mind, that his dragon would permit him to do this. _Thank you, Trath._ “There's no need to argue over it. I will be coming with you.”

“Not with Trath, not feeling the way he does!” Rahnis insisted. “I'll get Alaireth to order him to stay put if I must. You _can't_ force him into this!”

“I'm not. He'll be staying behind. I'll be riding with you.”

The Weyrwoman's face fell. “You don't need to do this, F'ren.”

She was right; he didn't. “Where's the risk?” he lied. “Either I trust my visual or I don't, and if I didn't I certainly wouldn't let you and Alaireth chance using it. It's my visual, I trust it, and I'm going with you. I was _there,_ Rahnis. It's not just the jump – though it'll be safer by far if I'm with you to keep it true – but everything else afterwards, too. Telling you what happened isn't the same as having lived it; Alaireth will be better placed to intervene if I'm there with you. I may not be responsible for their mistakes-”

Sh'vek made a noise of disbelief.

“I _know_ I'm not responsible for their mistakes,” F'ren corrected. “But they still happened _because_ of me, at least in part. A'minek was my friend. We'll have the best possible chance of getting him back if I go with you.”

“I concur,” Sh'vek said. “F'ren owes me this – but he'll be riding with me, not you.”

It shouldn't have mattered. Without Trath, he'd be nothing more than a passenger whichever dragon he rode...but F'ren wasn't any more enthusiastic about the idea than Trath was, and his uneasiness around the other bronzerider was growing stronger by the minute.

_Alaireth would look after you better if you were riding her, not Ormaith,_ his dragon said,  _but Ormaith says he, too, will be returning here safe. He says she will have a greater desire to succeed if you ride with him and his rider._

_And what do you say, Trath?_

_You miss your friend. You wish to save him and his dragon. You also believe this might help...._

_I_ think _it might help. I'm not so certain as to_ believe _it will._

_Trusting Ormaith to bear you is different to trusting his rider. And Alaireth says she will hear you, if he does anything that you need to alert her to._

If he'd only had reasons _not_ to ride with Sh'vek before then, that one alone tipped the balance the other way.

_You'll take precautions?_ Trath added.

_Oh, yes._

F'ren caught Sh'vek's eye. “Very well. So long as I get to use my own straps. And we  _both_ leave our belt knives behind.”

_I suppose that will do,_ Trath said.  _Sacquith's rider will bring our passenger straps._

“Very well,” Sh'vek said, removing his knife from its sheath at his waist and passing it into Sonaldra's care. “What did you expect me to do, cut you loose _between_?”

_Perspicacious, isn't he?_ F'ren thought to Trath as he followed suit with his own knife, and gave it over to Granatia for safekeeping.

“You place considerable trust in Rahnis' queen, leaving your own dragon behind,” Granatia mused as she took the blade from his hands.

“Yes, I do.” He turned to O'reb, and smiled at the young Weyrleader. “I'm not letting you take Snowfall up against Thread alone, you know.”

O'reb gave him a grim look. “You'd fardling better get back here before then!”

“What about the rest of the timing?” Rahnis asked. “Not the jump itself; everything that happens after we arrive. How long will we have before we need to act?”

Sh'vek let out a slow sigh. “From what I pieced together of that day, it happened not long after L'gin brought the other weyrlings back to the Weyr. I'd rather he'd waited for everyone, but he told me they'd been ready to leave, and he hadn't wanted the trouble to spread. He'd already sent F'ren up to the Hold to compose himself – seeing a local healer was no more than an excuse – and had Felhith tell Dilvith and Cassonth to come home to the Weyr as soon as they could. They wouldn't have been far behind the others; L'gin set the weyrlings to running laps of the Weyrbowl, and he told me they weren't even half way through the first one when it happened.”

“Your timing isn't quite right,” F'ren said. He hadn't been entirely convinced that his presence _would_ be needed in the past, but now his doubts were fading. “The others left before Trath took me up to the Hold. We were there for a minute or two, no more than that, when Trath saw Cassonth and Dilvith in the sky. I didn't look. Didn't want to see them again. And I never did.” It was a hard memory, that, but if he used it well enough, it might change everything.

The pained expression on Sh'vek's face intensified, and he looked away. “I woke to the sound of Ormaith's keen, and the knowledge that my son was lost. Does it matter when it happened?”

“Yes,” F'ren answered. “When it happens, it'll happen fast, and we can't be too close. Trath was _watching_ them. That means Ormaith and Alaireth can't be anywhere visible from Gar's courtyard, or from the beach. We'll need to come in at fighting altitude and _stay high_ , heading south-east out to sea before we turn to keep the sun between us and Cassonth and the Hold.

“There's something else, too,” he said softly. “Trath _keened_. So did Ormaith, so did the whole Weyr. Whatever happens, at least one of the dragons who goes _between_ from Gar at that moment will never come out again. I don't want to be the one to say this, Rahnis, but you _need_ to abandon Dilvith to her fate. Don't let Alaireth touch her, don't try to save her, just concentrate on getting back here with Cassonth.”

“How certain are you that Trath was keening for _them_?” Rahnis asked, turning to look back at her own queen.

There was only one answer to that question. “I'm not.”

Rahnis sucked the air past her teeth in a hiss. “Shells, F'ren.”

“Don't think about it,” F'ren warned. If she'd been concerned before, this new worry really wouldn't help matters.

“Is _that_ why you want him with you?” Rahnis asked, looking accusingly at Sh'vek.

“Don't tell me the thought hasn't crossed your mind,” he murmured. “Your queen will be forcing another dragon to go where and when she chooses. It would be the easiest thing in the world for her to misdirect us all, or to twist Ormaith's own leap awry.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “You truly are abhorrent. How can you even contemplate such a thing?”

“He rides with me,” Sh'vek insisted. “You and I will see to it that Cassonth has a clear passage back to this time with us.”

“Concentrate on Cassonth,” F'ren repeated, as reassuringly as he could. “Dilvith and Audrealle are long dead. We can't save them, too.”

Lowering her eyes, Rahnis nodded. “I suppose you're right.” She turned on the spot, taking in the sight of the Weyr. “Our return markers are just as crucial. We have five foreign queens here today. I want them all to stay where they are, up on the rim, once we've left. We won't be trying to make our return immediately. I don't want to leave it for too long – I doubt Trath will like the separation much – but enough that we don't accidentally overlap ourselves. Our dragons aren't at peak fitness today, and none of us need the added strain.”

She looked intently at Sonaldra. “I'll be trusting you to help O'reb coordinate this, while we're gone. Give us as long as Trath can bear, then send Irdana back home to Igen. I know Benden's furthest east...”

“Oh, I'm seeing this through!” Granatia insisted, with an excitement that seemed out of place in a woman of her rank and age.

“And I wouldn't dream of denying it to you,” Rahnis said warmly. “Your faith in us may make a difference, and I'm truly grateful for it. As I was saying, the queens that remain here will be our mark. They'll need to stay exactly where they were when we left, but they shouldn't have to wait for very long after Irdana and Chasyunth have gone. Because unless we've already returned, the rest of you will leave here as soon as Chasyunth sends word of her safe arrival back in Igen.”

Sonaldra frowned. “That won't give you very long.”

“That's the whole point, isn't it?” O'reb asked.

“Exactly,” Rahnis said. “O'reb's got the right idea, Sonaldra. The shorter the space of time we're trying to reach, the easier it'll be for Alaireth to locate it cleanly.”

“And if she doesn't? It's all too easy to overshoot a time mark, by hours or even days.”

“Which is exactly why I want it as tight and precise as possible! Trath overshot one of his jumps to Broken Hold by several hours because the local conditions conflicted with his visual. I'm not taking _any_ chances with this one.”

Silently, F'ren turned away and placed a hand on Trath's neck. _Alaireth won't make that mistake._

_I know. You_ will  _come back, F'ren,_ his dragon insisted. 

“I really don't like the idea of sending the other queens away,” Sonaldra was saying to Rahnis. “What if it prevents you arriving safely at some later time?”

_Alaireth will bring you all home._ Trath sent the thought without the slightest trace of doubt.  _I will be waiting. I will not live without you, F'ren._

_You won't have to. I'm coming back, I promise._

Reluctantly, F'ren turned back to the other riders. “Trath will know. Not sending the other Weyrwomen away won't be an issue. If everything goes to plan, we'll be back before they leave. If something goes wrong with our return jump...he'll be listening. He'll know.” He left it unsaid, that if they didn't return by the time the other queens left, they wouldn't be coming back at all. The whole Weyr would know, if that happened.

“If something goes wrong?” O'reb's voice came close to breaking on the final word. F'ren had thought the young Weyrleader's pallor a sign of concern, but what O'reb said next proved that anger, not fear, was his overriding emotion. “I don't _care_ what the alternative was; what's wrong is that any of this is happening at all! This Weyr can't afford the loss of another queen. I believe Rahnis when she says Alaireth is capable of succeeding, but she's risking herself and her queen needlessly, for the least deserving man on all of Pern! Haven't you wronged them both enough, Sh'vek? Your son and his dragon are _dead_.”

“Why, you jumped up, belly-crawl-”

Sh'vek's words ended in a choking gasp, which was quickly drowned out when Alaireth and Mannifeth bellowed as one.

O'reb stepped up to his predecessor and pushed him hard in the chest. “Whether they stay that way or not, you're not staying in my Weyr a second longer than you have to. Lady Sonaldra, I know I've no right to ask this of you, but I'd greatly appreciate it if you assisted Serreni in escorting this rider back to Ista as soon as possible after his dragon returns.” He finished in a state of breathless rage, the three Weyrwomen looking on in stunned approval, while Sh'vek backed away, his face contorted with his own fury.

“But of course, Weyrleader O'reb,” Sonaldra said.

Granatia tilted her head like a quizzical firelizard, peering past O'reb to Rahnis. “Faranth, that was quick work! I believe I see some potential, here. Don't you be _too_ quick to replace him.”

Sh'vek stifled a snarl. “Let's get this done with, Rahnis. Ormaith!”

O'reb turned back to Rahnis and nodded once. “Do what you have to, Weyrwoman. Mannifeth and I will wait for you up by the Star Stones.”

“Thank you, O'reb,” said Rahnis.

“Will Trath join us there?” he asked F'ren.

It was as good a place as any, and F'ren had already sensed his dragon's approval of the idea. “Yes, he will.”

While the other riders called their dragons down to them, F'ren spent the time in silent communion with Trath. He barely noticed the arrival of Sk'barn, bearing his passenger-straps. At length, Trath sighed loudly and pushed himself onto all fours. _I will go to the Star Stones now. I will not say goodbye. I will listen, and hold your thoughts close._

_As will I,_ F'ren agreed, watching his Trath leap into the air without him. Rahnis was also watching, Alaireth beside her, and he could tell they were both fixing the image of the other golds arrayed on the rim firmly in their minds. “You're certain about this?” he asked her. 

“It's not a sight you see every day, is it?” she said.

It wasn't an answer. “No. We won't ever have a better chance than this.” He pulled her close and kissed her on the forehead, then released her to wave up to Trath, now ensconced by the Star Stones with Mannifeth beside him. “Let's go.”

Slinging his straps over his head and one arm, F'ren walked over to where Sh'vek was waiting for him, already mounted on Ormaith. The bronze didn't deign to crouch, and he had a hard leap to make the first of the handholds. Sh'vek leaned down and hauled him up the rest of the way onto Ormaith's neck in silence. F'ren fastened his passenger straps securely to Ormaith's harness, adding a second loop through the carry-ring on the dragon's neckstrap. It would be a warm day _between_ before he ever trusted Sh'vek.

“Finished?” Sh'vek appeared amused by his precautions.

F'ren grinned back at him. “Keep me informed, bronze rider.” It felt very good to call him that.

Ormaith's hard leap into the air came with no warning at all. Alaireth was quick to follow him into the sky, and Trath quicker still to reassure his rider.

_You will be leaving on Alaireth's mark_ , Trath told him.  _She and Ormaith have their visuals ready. Stay safe. I will be waiting for you._

_I know._ Both dragons had now crested the rim, and F'ren knew he wouldn't have much longer to wait. He looked over at Alaireth, and saw Rahnis raising her arm in readiness.  _I'll be back before you know it, Trath, I pro-_

Black  _between_ enveloped everything, muting Trath's mind almost to nothing in an instant. He felt lost in it, adrift. Trath was both there and not there, a constant part of him that he could sense but not quite touch; the dragon lived and breathed beyond  _between_ , but he felt masked from his dragon's living presence by his own doubled existence: he was alone in the dark, frozen and suffocating as the un-felt beats of his heart came again and again. It stretched on, dark and cold and eternal, and he couldn't feel Trath any more. He was somewhere out there, alive in the light with F'ren himself, living out nigh on twenty turns of their lives.

_We're here_ , Alaireth told him.  _We are. And see, see where we are to be, where we go, where we always were._

He held the thought, held the image, clung to the trace of the queen's mind and everything she promised. He concentrated until it became difficult to think, waiting and hoping, until at last the darkness fell in upon itself under the onslaught of daylight. F'ren sucked in a desperate lungful of air, blinking up at the sun. His heart was pounding heavily in his chest. He took another breath, and only then looked down towards the ground, to see where Ormaith had brought him.

 

 

 

 

Their point of arrival was perfect, equidistant between Gar Hold and the weyrlings, and a similar distance out to sea. Trath was crashing through the jungle, struggling between branches and trunks and tangling himself with almost every other step, but they were already too high for the spectacle on the ground to be anything more than a silent vista. F'ren could see where his dragon was headed: the rise in the ground where the undergrowth grew less dense and blooming trees spread their perfume in the summer months; the dell where he'd taken Audrealle. She'd be there too, and A'minek.

Trath abruptly paused in his tracks, swinging his head to look up at the sky.

Sh'vek noticed it too. “Does he know?”

F'ren felt dizzied as his dragon's mind brushed over him, but the sensation quickly passed. He was down there himself, as the boy he once was. “I'm not who I used to be,” F'ren said. “He knows where I am, and that I need him. Down there, not here.”

“A'minek.”

Sh'vek spoke his son's name at little more than a whisper, barely audible above the rushing of the air, but the weight of emotion in that one single word was unmistakable. More moved than he'd have thought possible, F'ren placed his palm on Sh'vek's shoulder.

“Don't,” Sh'vek muttered.

Alaireth had already turned away from the coast to put some more distance between her and the weyrlings. Ormaith banked to follow, maintaining his altitude. F'ren let his hand drop down to his thigh. The southern sunlight was already a tangible warmth on his right side, in spite of the cold rushing of the air as the dragons headed further out to sea. On the beach beneath them, the Weyrlings were assembling into formation, L'gin dashing from one end to the other before mounting up himself.

Twisting himself awkwardly, F'ren watched as Trath leapt into the air, the dragon beating his wings just enough to carry him to where the forest path met the sands again, where he'd soon be reunited with his rider. Moments later, the other Weyrlings took to the sky and blinked away, leaving Cassonth, Dilvith and Trath alone on the beach. And then he saw himself, stumbling out into the open, clambering up between Trath's ridges.

A sudden, dreadful idea grew like live thread in his imagination. The youth that he'd been was about to ask Trath to take them back to the Weyr. Trath had refused, sensing that he'd been in no fit state to offer a flawless visual...but what if the dragon accepted his rider's request instead? What if Ormaith encouraged it? He'd been trying to keep his mind quiet, hoping that Trath wouldn't sense his presence, but now F'ren let the full force of his fear spill free, directing the imperative into the depths of the young dragon's mind. He felt it reflected back at him, ever so briefly, as Trath was driven by doubt to make his own assessment of his rider's mind. And then the dragon's mind was gone again, no doubt questing outwards towards Felhith back at the Weyr.

Only then was F'ren certain that everything would happen just as it had done before.

The two dragons flew on, passing a wave-drenched outcropping of rocks known as the Three Widows.  _Here will do,_ Alaireth said, speaking to him directly.  _I can sense the weyrlings well enough. We do not need to be any closer than we already are._

The queen settled into a wide circle, and Ormaith banked to take up station on its opposite side, giving F'ren an easier view of the coast. Trath and his younger self were airborne now, ascending just far enough to ride the warm air in a lazy glide all the way back to Gar Hold. Audrealle and A'minek were both preparing to mount, making the final adjustments to leathers and flying straps.

“Ormaith tells me Alaireth's been talking to you,” Sh'vek said. “He says she wants to concentrate on Cassonth now, but Rahnis will be watching for your signal when you think they're about to jump. They've not formulated their visuals yet, good or bad, but whatever went wrong may not be easy to anticipate. They don't think you'll be needed, but if you can limit the lag time it would be better for all of us.”

Looking over to Rahnis for confirmation, F'ren raised his arm, fist clenched, in readiness to make a Wingleader's signal to his riders to go _between. Understood, s_ he signalled in reply. F'ren turned back towards the coast and looked for Trath, but the dragon had already dropped out of sight behind the outer walls of the Hold.

“Faranth, A'minek, you knew better than this,” Sh'vek muttered to himself. “Why did you do it? _How_ could you do it?”

Cassonth and Dilvith were soon also airborne. F'ren felt sick with anticipation, as nervous as when he'd flown his first Threadfalls. “It won't be long now,” he said. “The last Trath saw them....” He leaned forward and pointed. “I think they jump level with the road, more or less. Twenty wingbeats more at most.”

Sh'vek nodded. “I'll have Ormaith pass that on. We're holding our return visual now. Ormaith says Alaireth has picked up both Cassonth's and Dilvith's and is ready to intervene at the instant that they jump. She's...what do you mean, _she isn't_ , Ormaith?”

The bronze bellowed, tucked a wing, and with a heavy flick of his tail yawed into a nauseatingly sharp turn that had him backtracking his path in a matter of seconds. F'ren instinctively grabbed at his straps, but what was left of his left hand lacked the strength to keep hold, and he found himself doubled painfully over sideways, winded and bruised. He gasped for breath, wishing that either dragon or rider had had the courtesy to warn him.

“Shard it, Rahnis!” Sh'vek yelled as his dragon fought to regain the dragonlengths of altitude he'd lost with the manoeuvre. “Don't fardling do this to me, you murderous snake!”

“What?” F'ren croaked, but Sh'vek was too busy yelling expletives in the Weyrwoman's direction to answer him. He pulled in another painful breath, and tried again. “What's _happening,_ Rahnis?” he yelled as loudly as he could across the intervening air.

“F'ren, get clear!” Rahnis screamed back at him, frantically signalling her intention to abort the jump.

_Cassonth's visual is good!_ Alaireth told him. 

That couldn't be right! He twisted his body back the other way to look past Sh'vek and check on Cassonth's position, wincing at the pain. The two weyrling dragons were flying the same steady course as before, making their slow ascent to _between_ -drill altitude. His hand dropping involuntarily to his belt, seeking out the knife he'd left back at the Weyr. “Sh'vek? Alaireth said-”

Sh'vek turned his head just far enough around to glare at him. “Shitting Faranth, I don't _care_ what she says. She's lying. But I know what she's done, and I'm not losing him like this!”

“What's happening?”

The bronzerider's hands balled up into fists. “They're fardling going _between_ to their deaths, unless I do something about it! Now shut up and let me concentrate!”

“Sh'vek, don't-”

 _GET YOURSELF CLEAR!_ Alaireth screamed into F'ren's mind as Ormaith's course altered again, and the bronze started powering towards the distant weyrlings.

F'ren tore his hand away from the empty sheath of his belt knife and started fumbling at the buckles of the straps set beside each thigh, the sick feeling in his belly growing with each additional beat of his racing heart. “They were always going to go _between_ , Sh'vek,” he said as he pulled the first length of leather free. _“_ That _can't_ be changed.”

“And so are we,” Sh'vek said firmly.

Knees bunched and his heels set against the side of Ormaith's neck in readiness to spring clear, F'ren swiftly pulled the second strap clear of its buckle, then looked down in dismay at the extra loop that still bound him securely to the carry-ring of Ormaith's harness.

It was the last thing he saw before the darkness swallowed him again.


	45. Chapter 45

_Can you feel the cold_ between  
 _When you cannot feel your toes?  
What is colder than _ between?  
 _No ice is colder than_ between  
 _Nothing is colder than_ between  
 _Nothing that anyone knows._

 _Can you see the dark_ between  
 _When you have not eyes to see?  
What is darker than _ between?  
 _No night is darker than_ between.  
 _Nothing is darker than_ between  
 _Nothing that anyone knows_

 _Can you hear your screams_ between  
 _When you have no air to breathe?  
Nothing is quieter than _ between  
 _The cold, dark, silence of_ between  
 _How loud, the silence of_ between  
 _The voice of all our fears_

 

**Morning, 5.1.16**

**Gar Hold, Southern Boll**

   
 _Cassonth's visual still holds true,_ Alaireth said.

Rahnis could feel the depth of the dragon's concern, and it easily equalled her own. _You're sure, aren't you?_

In truth, she didn't need the confirmation. She'd been in close rapport with her dragon when Alaireth had sensed first Dilvith and Audrealle sharing their destination with one another, and again when, shortly afterwards, Cassonth and A'minek had done the same. The minds of the weyrling dragons weren't as loud or clumsily directed as those of dragons newly hatched from their shells, but nor were they particularly quiet. Alaireth had kept her touch as distant and gentle as she could, but her subtlety hadn't been necessary; both the young dragons and their riders had been far too consumed with their own thoughts to have noticed her unless she bespoke them directly. There was a steady interchange of thoughts between them. Alaireth had only picked up on the edges of the conversation, but it was amply clear that although neither rider was willing to give the other the apology they each thought they deserved, they'd left their argument behind them on the ground.

Rahnis looked across at Ormaith. F'ren still had his hand raised in the air.

 _The weyrlings mean to go_ between _at the usual altitude,_ the queen said.

That left plenty of time for something to go wrong. And yet...the image of the Weyr that Alaireth had seen in the young bronze's mind was as clear a visual as any that Rahnis had ever used, and Dilvith's differed from Cassonth's only in the details. Neither rider was exactly _happy_ , but there was nothing in their surface thoughts to suggest the coming calamity. They were following their training perfectly: concentrating on getting safely airborne before worrying about _between_ , and ascending to the well-practised altitude of their training before heading home to the Weyr.

And there was _still_ nothing wrong with Cassonth's visual.

Worse, Rahnis no longer believed that anything that either A'minek or his dragon might do would change that fact.

 _Do they know?_ she asked Alaireth, glancing in Ormaith's direction once again.

 _Ormaith knows I've seen their visuals, but I have not shared what I saw. His rider wishes to know what went wrong, but there is nothing, nothing wrong!_ The queen's mind was grim. _I_ cannot _do this, Rahnis. Neither will return to the High Reaches in this time. That will not change. But I will not be the one to send them to their deaths._

_If it's to happen anyway...._

_Then I will act as fast as I can, when and if I must!_ Alaireth was deeply distressed by the prospect of waiting for disaster to strike. _Something may happen. Something_ will _happen – fifteen wingbeats from now, if F'ren's guess and my own are correct. And someone will still die. Until then, we wait._

Groaning, Rahnis leaned back against Alaireth's neck ridge. She could sense her dragon pressing lightly against the edges of Dilvith's mind, could sense the certainty in the young queen's chosen destination.

 _Ormaith knows,_ Alaireth said resignedly _. He read Cassonth's destination, and asked me why it matches the High Reaches of now, and if I was responsible for mending it._

_What did you tell him?_

_The truth. But I don't think he believes me! He accuses me of correcting the visual, of trying to kill us all!_

Alaireth had done nothing of the sort...but if Dilvith returned to the Weyr unimpeded, here in the past, the course of history would be altered. It shouldn't be possible to do such a thing – whatever they were doing deep within their own pasts ought to be things that they'd inevitably, always done – but if it did happen, their return to a future which had been changed slightly or greatly or even utterly negated would be jeopardised. F'ren had faced this same choice already: to end the life of another dragon and rider in the goal of preserving Trath's. Rahnis hardened her heart. _We can't let her go_ between _on that visual_ , _Alaireth._

Alaireth rumbled deep in her chest. _Bad enough that we are to abandon her! I will_ not _be the cause of her death!_

A dozen lengths away, Ormaith bellowed furiously, turning practically on his tail-tip. Sh'vek was yelling and gesticulating wildly at them both, but the prevailing winds carried the meaning of his words away.

 _No, don't tell me, Alaireth._ Rahnis could feel the assault of the bronze's mind on her queen, knew that Alaireth was suffering it willingly. For however long Ormaith thought he might succeed in bending the queen's will, he wouldn't attempt to force a visual on the weyrlings himself. _Just concentrate on home. If nothing changes, we'll try to take them both with us, leave Ormaith to find his own way home. Oh Faranth, what else can we do? If someone must be sacrificed...._

_Wait. We wait._

F'ren was now shouting something at her too, but his voice only added to the confusion. “F'ren, get clear!” she yelled back at him, scissoring her arms ahead of her, hoping that he'd get the message even if the wind wasn't enough in her favour for him to hear her.

 _I've told him, dearest Rahnis. I'm doing everything I can. But Ormaith will not believe me!_ And then the queen offered Rahnis a choice: whether the queen should continue in her efforts to restrain Ormaith from contacting the Weyrlings directly, or if she should instead turn whatever strength she could spare to forcing F'ren's will. _At some point, I must concentrate fully on our own jump home. Ormaith will intervene then, and I do not wish to be distracted by him._

It was an easy choice. “Get yourself clear!” she screamed at F'ren again as Ormaith banked away from them, knowing her queen was with her. Powerless to help, she watched as he started tugging his flying straps free. _We'll catch him ourselves if we can...or send someone back for him._

Alaireth was already closing the gap between them as fast as she could. Rahnis tried to convince herself that if F'ren jumped, it ought to be possible to reach him in time and still follow the weyrlings. _If he gets clear of Ormaith, we try for both weyrlings. If not...._

If not, what _then_?

_There's no more time to decide, Rahnis! Help me!_

Rahnis closed her eyes and pictured the Weyr, all the queens except Irdana's exactly where they'd been before, perched high on rim and spindles. _Then we save who we can!_

 _Cassonth and Dilvith jump_ now _!_ Alaireth said, her mind stretching far and wide to encompass their leaps. _Ormaith has disrupted both their visuals; now he fights to impose his own upon Cassonth. They go! Ormaith follows!_

“Go! _”_ Rahnis yelled, remembering only at the very last second to fill her lungs with air. _Follow them, dearest, follow them and find them and bring them home with us._

The sensation of air rushing past her face cut off abruptly, as did everything else, from the ache of tension in her back and clenched fingers to the nervous swell of fear in her guts. She had no eyes to open, but that didn't make _between_ any less black and frozen than usual. But oh, how it hurt, as Alaireth fought and stretched and pushed!

Rahnis concentrated harder on the familiar outlines of the Weyr, and on dark Ondarth with the two bronzes perched to either side, Minith and pale Holshayth on the spindles, Linnebith on the same spot she always preferred when the sun was out, and Junkath right above the entrance to the Hatching Cavern. And to either side of the Star Stones, Trath and Mannifeth.

 _No!_ spoke a voice she didn't recognise, male and terrified and angrily stubborn. _No, that's wrong, that's not the right where! Oh Faranth NO this is wrong!_

 _No!_ spoke another voice, female and furiously imperious. _What have you done! What are you doing? Stop it! Stop it now!_

Pain struck at Alaireth again: an imagined heavy welter of blows, of slashing claws and teeth.

 _It's not right it's not right it's not right!_ Cassonth screamed at her in his panic.

 _SHOW ME WHAT YOU ARE DOING!_ Dilvith demanded. _CASSONTH? WHERE ARE YOU, CASSONTH?_

Rahnis wanted to whimper under the onslaught. Her visual blurred briefly as Dilvith lashed out again. _Oh Faranth, Alaireth! What of Ormaith?_

 _Cassonth fights him still,_ the queen answered softly. _Ormaith will not win this fight, but I cannot reach Cassonth deeply enough to help him while Ormaith persists. Oh Rahnis, dearest, Dilvith knows Ormaith's mind. She recognises him now. He blames us for the failure of the weyrlings' jump, and asks for her help, to bring the three of them back to our time. She does not understand, but she is deeply afraid, and has no reason not to trust him!_

Stubbornly Rahnis focused her concentration. _They can't stop us getting home. We_ are _going home! Stay as close as you can, and be ready for when Ormaith's strength breaks. Sharding bastard man, he'll kill them all and himself and F'ren too. I swear, Alaireth, if we can save them, I'll, I'll...._

_Calm, Rahnis! Concentrate! This will not be quick._

She could feel her queen soothing her spirits, and an unspoken concern over how little air she'd managed to take in before Alaireth had followed the other dragons. _I'm calm. I'm concentrating._

Black _between_ seemed to be lightening. Not everywhere, and if directions hadn't been utterly meaningless, _between,_ Rahnis would have guessed that the change was happening in Cassonth's direction. The young bronze was a condensed knot of panic and fear, still refusing to take on a visual that neither he nor his rider believed. He was fighting hard to return to his own time, screaming mentally with pain every time Ormaith swatted the pair's desperate attempts to mend their visual aside. Alaireth's mind groaned under the tortured pressure of seeing image after image appear and then instantly fracture into shards deep within Cassonth's mind, increasingly without any intervention from Ormaith.

He was already lost, Rahnis realised. No visual of the dragon's own making would ever return Cassonth from _between,_ but the longer he fought against Ormaith the deeper they were all being pulled. She could feel it: the stretching of wills and minds that pulled at the dragons, between origin and destination, but also to the deeper darkness that lay beneath it all, a darkness that was now splintering with light. _Is there no hope for him, Alaireth?_

 _There is always hope,_ Alaireth promised. _Be with me, Rahnis. Be strong for me._

Rahnis gave the full strength of her heart over to her dragon's will. The icy cold of _between_ deepened again, blacker than any Istan obsidian, and cold beyond frozen things. She felt her dearest dragon stretch out her mind with all the strength she had left, seizing upon Ormaith and forcing him to stop. She felt her visual of home blazing strong and bright and hard, and then it was gone. Dull lassitude filled her thoughts, and she felt Alaireth pushing hard against another mind, calling and pleading. Searching. Finding.

 _There_ , the queen whispered, and now she was the midpoint, a stepping stone between the yawning nothingness and the mind of the dragon she'd found on the far side of the empty void. _There_ , she said again, weaker now. _This is the way home._

 

 

 

 

It was cold, except where she burned, and her vision was black, except where it blazed with blinding brightness. Slowly, she started to make sense of it all. Air, cold and burning, on her face, inside her hungry lungs. The brightness was the sun and the white-blue sky, almost more than her eyes could cope with while black _between_ still clung to the edges of her sight. And if there was pain – a great deal of pain: sharp and aching in her limbs, hard and pounding in her head – it meant that she still lived, and so did her dearest Alaireth, whose wings, gold and broad and strong, had borne them both safely home to the High Reaches.

There were dragons on the wing around them, above and beneath and arrayed on every ledge in sight. Trath and Mannifeth were both bugling, accompanied by what seemed like half the dragons of the Weyr. Blinking back her tears as her aching lungs fought for breath, Rahnis searched the sky, looking for some sign of Ormaith amongst the airborne beasts. _Where is he, Alaireth?_

 _Ormaith is still_ between, her queen answered. _But Dilvith is here, though she is weak and very distressed. Dilvith, be calm! Your rider will soon wake again, just as my Rahnis did._

The queen's attempted reassurance wasn't well received. Dilvith couldn't have been much less exhausted than Alaireth was herself, but the young gold still had enough strength left to her to make her displeasure felt.

 _WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? WHERE IS_ CASSONTH? _AUDREALLE! WAKE UP, AUDREALLE! NONE OF THIS IS RIGHT! NONE OF THESE DRAGONS BELONG IN MY WEYR!_

The pounding in Rahnis' head intensified as the queen focused her attention on them more fully. _YOU DID THIS TO US! HOW DARE YOU!_

 _Be silent!_ Alaireth snapped, swinging her great head around to hiss at the young gold.

Dilvith answered her in kind, shrill and furious, her rider making small, weak movements from where she sat slumped across her queen's ridges.

Alaireth's patience was running short. _You may be almost twenty turns from the life you left behind, but this is still the High Reaches, and you are both still alive, when all of Pern believed you lost. You should be grateful that you live, Dilvith!_

The young queen howled with fury. _GRATEFUL! How DARE you tell me-_

Snarling, Alaireth turned ponderously towards her. _I DARE WHAT I WILL. AND YOU WILL BE SILENT, WEYRLING, UNLESS YOU WISH TO LEARN THE MEANING OF REGRET!_ The threat was empty, but it was enough to convince Dilvith to break off her mental assault.

 _Dilvith blames me for what happened to her and Cassonth,_ Alaireth explained as the young gold banked hastily away. _But h_ _er rider is waking now, and she is more concerned for her than she is with arguing with me. That is good. I need to concentrate._

_You're trying to reach Ormaith again?_

_Yes! I've told the other queens to stay where they are, and that there is still some hope. I know where he is,_ between, _and so does Trath...but we do not understand why he is still there and not_ here _!_

Rahnis hugged her arms to her chest, easing out the tension in her back, and tried to figure out whereabouts in the sky overhead Alaireth had come out from _between._ Ormaith would surely reappear in roughly the same location. The five golds and four bronzes still held the rim exactly as Rahnis had pictured them, so there was nothing to _stop_ him from reappearing at her end of the timeline...except, if Ormaith was ever going to make it out alive, why hadn't he done so at the same time as the two queens? Was it their presence in the sky that was disrupting his arrival? Rahnis felt herself starting to panic. _Faranth, Alaireth, we need to get down to the bowl! Quickly! But please, please tell me you can tell Trath that Ormaith's on his way!_

_Dearest Rahnis, how I wish that I could!_

And at that same moment, Trath kicked away from the Starstones, opened his jaws wide and started to keen.

Rahnis felt her guts twisting up inside her at the sound, which grew and grew as it was picked up in sympathy by the other dragons of the Weyr. _No! Oh NO! Alaireth, is he....?_

 _Wait,_ Alaireth commanded softly. She banked gently, spilling air from her wings as she shifted into a steady, controlled descent, following the same route as Dilvith down to the ground. _It is Cassonth that Trath grieves. Ormaith is still alive._

He had to be, Rahnis realised – Trath would have suicided, otherwise. She watched the bronze circling the air above them, and then, as the dragons' keen died away, saw him dive back to his place beside the Starstones. But, unlike the other dragons, Trath didn't fall silent. Instead, he kept on calling and calling and calling for his rider: a futile, anguished cry that was enough to break her heart.

 _Please, Alaireth, please bring them back!_ _For Trath's sake, please!_ He'd been their anchor, Rahnis realised, him and Mannifeth both...but Trath's had been the mind that Alaireth had found first, the one that had kept her going long enough to reach Mannifeth as well, and then to break free of the cold darkness of _between._

 _He saved all four of us,_ Alaireth agreed as she landed on the hard, dry ground, a few lengths from Dilvith. _And I'm trying everything I can, but Ormaith still will not take my help! Ormaith's rider insists on including Cassonth's presence in their visual. I can feel them still, and so can Trath, but unless Ormaith lets Cassonth go...I am afraid they will not live, and I do not have the strength to force them._

_How long do they have?_

_The rest of their lives. Cassonth is gone. They must choose who to follow, before their strength gives out. And mine._

“ _Faranth,_ I'm a fool!” Rahnis swore. Alaireth might be pushing the limits of her strength, but there was no reason at all that she had to act alone. _Bespeak the other queens, and tell...no, beg Delene to give us all the help she can_. _Tell her she'll be a hero, if she does, that all Pern will sing of her! Ask her to tell the Weyr to listen with us, to join with Trath, to find Ormaith and bring him home. Ask them to do all this, that dragons may live that would otherwise be lost!_

The strength that Alaireth lacked, the dragons of her Weyr eagerly supplied, those of Snowfall Wing most keenly of all. Delene, Linnebith and the four foreign queens were bright beacons above them all, weaving the Weyr's will together and bringing a unifying clarity to the endeavour.

 _They're there,_ Trath said, supplying the necessary focus. _My F'ren is there, with Ormaith. I can see them both in the darkness. I see you, Ormaith. Come back to us, please! Remember the way home. Come home._

And Ormaith did.

The bronze emerged deep within the Weyrbowl, his wings trimmed to glide...but it was instantly clear that something was seriously amiss. Rahnis had never seen such a thing happen before, but what little momentum Ormaith had was all wrong: downwards and lateral, as if the dragon's passage _between_ had been warped on some fundamental level _._ The breadth of his wings could only arrest his descent by so much. Bellowing in alarm, the exhausted bronze paddled his legs and swept his wings in and upwards, fighting for his life. With no ground to brace his failing strength against, nothing but too little air around him, the precursor to the dragon's first instinctive down-stroke – as powerful as it still was – cost him almost as much altitude as it gained. Ormaith was falling: not in the elegant stoop of a dragon exchanging height for speed, not even the curving arc of a thrown sack of firestone, but rather in a desperate, clawing plummet, mere seconds from disaster.

 _Blink!_ Alaireth commanded weakly.

Ormaith sent back a roiling wave of confused, exhausted rage, overlaid with confusing echoes of the call that had finally drawn him back to the Weyr. Rahnis felt Alaireth's offered image of a safe altitude high above the Weyr dissolve away in the face of it. If Sh'vek was conscious enough to act, he might still have strength enough to send Ormaith _between_ , but she doubted he could give the dragon clear enough direction to bring him out of it again. _Can we reach them in time?_ she asked, knowing it would be impossible well before Alaireth confirmed it.

High above and to the west, Minith had dropped precipitously from her perch, screaming with concern. But she was too far away, and there was neither time nor space enough for any dragon to blink close enough to help, even to attempt a risky dorsal catch. Three times in as many seconds, Ormaith's wings caught the air at angles that Rahnis knew must pain him, before being tucked, raised and then forced downwards once again, driven hard against the air through which he fell, not so steeply as before but still easily fast enough to kill. Ormaith was fighting with a finesse that any dragon would envy, but the dynamics of flight, of speed and lift and the incessant pull of Pern itself needed at least a dragonlength more altitude than he had available to him. Rahnis watched in horror as the struggling dragon caught a wingtip on the ground, a dozen lengths from where Alaireth stood. He was too far away for her to hear the sound of the bone breaking, but there was no mistaking the meaning of the upturned bending of the offside wing-spar, seen in the brief instant before the dragon screamed in pain and pitched sideways into a stumbling impact with the ground. The broken wing was flung skywards as Ormaith's body slewed two full lengths across the loose dirt of the Weyrbowl towards her and Alaireth, leaving an ichor-streaked trail behind him.

 _Go to them, dearest!_ Alaireth said. _I have called for Delene, but you will be needed too._

Rahnis needed no further encouragement. She dropped to the ground and sprinted towards the bronze, managing all of half a dozen strides before her body failed her. Falling into a stumbling walk, she screamed for the healers, even as she desperately searched for some sign of F'ren. Ormaith had ended up with his belly and hind legs directed towards her, his head and neck twisted awkwardly away and the raised, broken wing masking his riders from her view. She looked up to the rim and saw Trath descending, faster than perhaps he should, but at least he hadn't gone _between_ , and neither had Ormaith. That boded well for the health of both riders...for the present.

A movement in the corner of her vision caught Rahnis' attention, and she glanced back to see what Dilvith was up to. Audrealle was screaming incoherently, and Dilvith had risen up on her hind legs and opened her wings. The young queen gave a furious cry and dropped back into a crouch, poised to spring into the air.

 _Stay where you are!_ Alaireth ordered. _Help me, Junkath, Holshayth!_

 _What's happening?_ Rahnis asked, unsure of which way she should move.

 _Dilvith's rider is insistent that she and Dilvith should go back to the_ real _High Reaches right away! Rahnis, she does not understand, she will_ make _her queen go_ between _again!_

The thought sent a chill down the length of Rahnis' spine. _Oh Faranth, they don't have a chance!_

 _Dilvith, you MUST stay!_ Alaireth insisted. _Listen to me! There is no time between then and now when you exist here, alive. You_ cannot _go to where you never were! Mannifeth! Holshayth! Junkath! All of you, DO NOT LET HER GO!_

Slowly, the young gold lowered her belly to the ground, submitting to the other dragons' will. _Ask Holshayth if Sonaldra will take Audrealle in hand,_ Rahnis suggested. The poor girl's distress was perfectly understandable, but she didn't have time to deal with her herself – especially not while Audrealle still blamed her and Alaireth for everything that had happened to her.

Rahnis hurried on towards Ormaith as fast as she could move on her aching legs. The dragon's cries of pain were low and ragged: never a good sign. There were other riders and weyrfolk heading his way already, and a handful of them would reach him before her. M'arsen was one, and he and another man had had the presence of mind to bring buckets of numbweed with them. She was sure the numbweed would be needed – and in much greater quantities than what had been brought so far – but she hoped they'd both remember their training and hold back from applying it until the healers gave their say-so. Any fool could ease a dragon's pain, but if doing so masked a more life-threatening injury....

Ormaith's noisy moans ceased abruptly, sending a frisson of alarm through Rahnis' thoughts. _You've taken his pain?_ she asked Alaireth, praying it was that and not the alternative.

 _Part of it_ , her queen answered heavily. _Minith and Linnebith do the rest. Both of Ormaith's wings are damaged, and I think one of his legs is also broken. There is pain elsewhere too: muscle damage, a deep laceration to his breast and possibly further bleeding within. Ulleth and Bavinth are bringing healers, and more help will follow. Junkath will keep Dilvith subdued until she and Audrealle can calm themselves down. I hope they shall both see some sense soon._

Ormaith's condition was a much more immediate concern. _Tell Ulleth and Bavinth that I'll get started on triage._ _What of F'ren? And Sh'vek?_

 _I cannot yet reach either one_ , Alaireth said. _They were too long_ between.

Rahnis had been too long _between_ herself, but it was hard to tell how much extra elapsed time F'ren would have suffered before Ormaith's emergence. _Like drowning,_ Weyrwoman Malia had written in one of her records, warning of the dangers of travelling _between_ across too many turns in one jump. She knew of half a dozen of Ista's seacrafters who'd been brought back from the edge of that death, but only a few had ever recovered completely.

 _Both live,_ Alaireth reassured, _and I do not think them in any immediate danger. Minith concurs; she sees them and says Serreni will attend to them, with Pellenth's rider's help._

Rahnis didn't have a great deal of trust left as far as M'arsen was concerned, but she knew that Serreni could be relied on. The other early arrivals had all had the sense not to approach the bronze too closely. Greenrider F'sigger was standing a safe distance from Ormaith's head, shaking his own. F'ren thought him trustworthy enough, she recalled. _Tell Puteth that her rider should help weyrwoman Serreni. And hurry up whichever green's bringing Tarkan, please!_

A little further away, Varral and a joat whose name still eluded her were busy unpacking a bundle of linens. Rahnis was pleased to identify Traven, soon to be formally apprenticed to the Healer Hall, as the young man who'd carried the other bucket – and even happier that he'd brought redwort rather than the numbweed she'd first assumed.

“Good thinking, Traven,” she said as she stooped to disinfect her hands, noting that he'd already done the same. Trath and Minith had landed close to one another a length beyond Ormaith. _Any news?_

 _F'ren lives_ , _Trath says, and was conscious briefly, but he's hurt. I do not know how badly._

As desperate as she was to see what had become of F'ren, from what Alaireth had already told her she knew that Sh'vek's dragon had to be her first priority; she'd already been too long delayed. “I'm sure Pakall will be as glad of your assistance as I am,” Rahnis told Traven. “Until he gets here, you'll help me assess his injuries. Stay close, observe, listen, and tell me if you see anything I've missed.” _Warn Ormaith I'm approaching, but whatever happens,_ hold _him here,_ she ordered her queen. _Don't let him go_ between _!_

_I won't._

A small but spreading pool of ichor had appeared beneath one of the bronze's hind legs. As Rahnis drew closer, she saw a pale shape jutting awkwardly from the site of the bleeding. “Compound fracture to the near hind lower-limb,” she said – one didn't need to be Crafthall trained to recognise that much – but she wasn't sure whether the bleeding should worry her or not. “It doesn't _look_ like arterial bleeding.”

“No, not yet,” Traven agreed. “Might change if he starts moving.”

“Right. Then we'd better make sure he doesn't,” she said, hurrying on. _Ask the other queens to make sure he keeps still please, Alaireth._

_Minith does so already._

If she was, she wasn't doing it particularly well: Ormaith's right wing was twitching continuously.

 _She doesn't think Ormaith's condition likely to deteriorate,_ Alaireth added. _Pellenth's rider and F'sigger are ready to start getting the men down now._

Rahnis ducked beneath the bronze's trailing edge, close to his belly, and beckoned for Traven to join her – Ormaith was clearly reluctant to let his forestay tip touch the ground, but would be hard pressed to strike her with his wings where she now stood no matter how much he thrashed. _Tell Minith I'll be joining them soon, but ask her to wait until Tarkan gets there if she can._

The break to the spar bone in Ormaith's right wing had also broken the skin, but the damage was at a good distance from the wingtip and she guessed it would heal well with no major long-term repercussions. The lacerations to his torso also looked minor, but she didn't have much of a clue as to what condition his innards were in. “Tell Pakall he might want to check his chest over first,” she told Traven. “That broken spar and all the minor cuts can wait, and unless anything changes, so can the leg.”

Traven shook his head. “You've not seen the other wing yet, Weyrwoman. It's bad. _Really_ bad.”

“Doesn't matter,” Rahnis countered. “Wing damage kills flying dragons, not grounded ones, and his wings didn't take the worst of the impact.”

As gently as she could, she pressed her fingers against the pulse point behind the dragon's armpit, trying hard not to imagine what Ormaith's heavy landing might have done to the two riders. The danger was all too clear. A dragon's neck ridges only flexed so much; they could do serious damage to anyone sitting between them. Broken ribs were the most likely injury, and bad enough in themselves, but she'd heard tell of punctured lungs and other ruptured organs in serious cases, and even of riders being left paralysed.

“Weyrwoman?”

Traven had said something else too, before that, she realised. “Sorry?”

“Do you think he has internal injuries? How bad?”

“Alaireth doesn't know. His pulse is fast, but not overly uneven.” A healer would be able to tell a lot more than she could from the exact rhythm. “Stay here, and make sure Pakall _finds out_ , Traven. Alaireth thinks the worst pain is about two handspans up,” she said, pressing her palm against the dragon's flesh, “around the third or fourth pseudocostal loop of his ribcage, but he'll know far better than I do what else he should be worrying about. Got that?”

“Aye, Weyrwoman.”

Borrowing on her queen's awareness of the Weyr, Rahnis checked up on the dragonhealers: Ulleth was still on the ground, presumably being loaded with supplies – there was little else that could explain her delay – but whoever Bavinth was bringing would be with them very shortly, thank Faranth.

 _Bavinth brings both Pakall and Tarkan,_ Alaireth told her.

 _They'll definitely need Delene's help_.

_She comes. Sonaldra and Dilvith's rider are with her, and Mannifeth brings-_

Rahnis jerked instinctively backwards as Ormaith started to move. The bronze lurched awkwardly towards her, rolling onto his belly and then briefly coming to his feet to free his other wing before collapsing back to the ground again with a scream of pain.

 _Sorry._ Alaireth's apology was strained. _That won't happen again. His rider is on the ground and conscious again._

_What happened to waiting for the healers!_

_He didn't want to wait._

“Faranth!” Rahnis looked around for Traven, and found him sitting on the ground a few paces away, a stunned expression on his face. Given how close he was to Ormaith's chest, the boy was lucky to have been knocked aside as well as down. “Are you all right?”

Traven nodded, but his hands were trembling and his face was pale. Rahnis helped him to his feet and gently pushed him in the direction of the new arrivals. “Go speak to Pakall, and have someone else double check that leg again too, if you'd rather stay clear. I'm going to see what's happening.”

Not wanting to distract the dragons stationed at Ormaith's head – nor to attract the attention of a pain-maddened, unpredictable bronze, whose rider was unlikely to have anything pleasant to say to her for the foreseeable future – Rahnis jogged tail-wise towards the other side of the dragon. As soon as she'd passed the bulk of his hindquarters, she stopped, and swore loudly at the sight that met her. “ _Faranth!_ ”

She'd only once seen a worse injury: a weyrling green who'd been overflown sevendays before she was anywhere near ready to bear her rider and subsequently come to grief on the forested outer slopes of Ista Weyr. Ormaith's left wing might have been spared the force of the dragon's initial impact – that had been when his leg had broken, she suspected – but at some point soon after it had caught on the ground and become tangled, twisted and crushed beneath him. The primary mainsail was torn from lub to leech, the secondary was shredded to tatters, and although the spar-sail was more or less intact, it now lay limply curled in upon itself at an angle that spoke of a serious injury to the finger joint. Some of the damage could be mended, with time and care...but if Ormaith ever flew again, it wouldn't happen for turns.

A small crowd was gathered beside the dragon's shoulder. Sh'vek was on his feet, being supported – no, held back – by M'arsen and F'sigger. F'ren was suspended by his straps almost upside down beneath Ormaith's neck, one foot caught up in a tangle of leather close to the dragon's ridges, the other one bootless. The back of his flying jacket was darkly wet, and had been torn almost as thoroughly as Ormaith's wings. He was kicking out with his free leg, groaning with obvious pain as he twisted his body in an attempt to reach one of the buckles of Ormaith's straps. The leather was whitened with strain in places, but the stitching was far too secure to allow much in the way of stretching or slackening.

_Help him down, please!_

It was Trath who had spoken to her. The bronze was pacing the ground beside Serreni's queen, eyes whirling violet. _Minith will not allow me closer._

 _Nor will I, Trath,_ Alaireth answered _. Better for F'ren if Ormaith does not become agitated again._

“Better still if someone gets him down from there,” O'reb said as he joined Rahnis. “Faranth, I never imagined anything like this might happen. What went wrong?”

She didn't pause to wonder that he'd been party to the conversation, not so soon after the two bronzes had helped free Alaireth and herself from _between_ 's icy darkness. “Nothing. Everything.” There was a hard knot of guilt inside her, right where her heart used to be. “Oh O'reb, if we hadn't gone back, they'd _both_ have lived.”

He smiled sadly and gave her an awkward clout on the shoulder. “But you always went back, didn't you? And whatever happened, always happened the way it did. Isn't that right?”

He'd quoted Malia accurately enough, but the simple platitude had lost a great deal of its conviction for her now. “Right?” She was about to tell him that she didn't think she knew what the word meant any more, when Sh'vek pulled free from the other riders and promptly lunged for F'ren. “Shard it!”

“Come on!” O'reb said, already moving, far faster than she herself could manage.

The former Weyrleader might have been disarmed, but that didn't make him harmless, certainly not against an opponent in F'ren's position. Rahnis winced in sympathy as the first blow landed on F'ren's obviously injured back, sensing that Alaireth's hold on Ormaith left nothing to spare for his rider. F'ren was fending him off as well as he could, but although F'sigger was making a creditable attempt at separating the two men M'arsen was merely looking on, a deeply satisfied look on his face. And then he stepped forward, ready to intercept O'reb as soon as he came within arm's reach.

There was only one way to end it quickly. “Faranth, I never thought I'd need to do this,” Rahnis muttered, hating what she was about to do to Sh'vek's bronze. _Let him feel it again, Alaireth, but don't let him move._ An instant later, Ormaith let out a low rumbling groan...and Sh'vek staggered backwards, screaming his dragon's name for all he was worth.

“NO, ORMAITH, NO!” Sh'vek turned on the spot, almost tripping over his own feet in the process, searching for the source of his dragon's anguish. A look of horror came over his face as he took in the sight of his dragon's ruined wing, seeing the extent of the damage for what seemed to be the very first time. “What have they done to you, Ormaith!” he gasped, lurching back to his dragon's side. “What have they _done_?”

He'd been unconscious when it had all happened, Rahnis remembered, and had woken only after the worst of the pain had already been buffered by the queens. “Enough,” she whispered, feeling sick to her stomach. _That's enough, Alaireth. So much more than enough._

Sh'vek barely reacted to the easing of his dragon's pain. He stood almost rooted to the ground, one hand resting on Ormaith's heaving flank, his face glazed with concentration. If his eyes had been taking in anything at all, he would have been staring right at her, but at least it spared him the sight of O'reb and F'sigger cutting F'ren free, and of Tilga and two of the Weyr's larger herdsmen heading towards him. Rahnis slowly moved out of Sh'vek's eyeline, torn between giving the man a wide berth and getting over to F'ren as quickly as she could.

 _Come here,_ Trath suggested. _The others will bring him to me._

She started towards him, but had barely taken a single stride when she heard footsteps behind her and Traven's voice raised in desperate appeal. “Weyrwoman! Can you come? Pakall's asking for you; he needs Alaireth's help right now!”

With great reluctance and no little concern, Rahnis turned away from Trath and went to see what Pakall needed.


	46. Chapter 46

_Fire lizards fair, fly where you will_  
 _O'er Hold, Weyr and Crafthall, o'er ocean and hill_  
 _Free of all trouble and free of all care_  
 _You carry my dreams as you soar through the air_

_Dear child so fair, fly where you will_  
 _Waking or sleeping, I care for you still_  
 _Be free of your troubles, be free of your care_  
 _And live in my dreams with the firelizards fair_

_-Pernese Lullaby_

 

**Afternoon, 17.3.35**

**High Reaches Weyr**

 

The pressure on his back eased, and a little of the pain. F'ren heard the wet sounds of Tarkan's cloth being dipped and rinsed once again, and braced himself for the end of the short-lived respite. “Faranth, I was wrong. This is _worse_ than threadscore!”

“Just a little longer,” Tarkan murmured. “You're a lucky man, F'ren. I'm sure it hurts some, but it's barely more than grazed, even if you did end up with half the weyrbowl stuck in it. Believe me, you don't want the numbweed on until the dirt is out.”

Trath lifted his chin and peered over his rider's shoulder. _It's not bleeding very much. I think the man is almost finished._

“He's in my light again,” Tarkan warned.

 _He's right,_ F'ren told Trath as the dragon settled his head back onto the ground _. I'm luckier than I have any right to be._ The sight of the ground rushing past beneath him, fast and uncomfortably close, was still fresh in his memory. He _never_ wanted to see it from that angle again, and certainly not at such speed or in such hideous proximity. If Trath hadn't roused him in time, he'd probably have been ground up like the well-minced filling of a meatroll. Even in the time he'd had, he'd barely been able to haul himself far enough up the side of Ormaith's neck to avoid a crippling injury, or worse.

 _We're both lucky,_ Trath agreed.

F'ren reached out to stroke his dragon lightly on the snout. They'd been holding one another's minds close, much as they'd done after Kiath's death, but the physical contact definitely added an extra layer of reassurance for both of them. He'd never realised how horrific _between_ could truly be until that last, long journey through it.

The journey backwards had been bad enough. Trath had been little more than a faint, silent presence, but at least he'd been able to feel him, and Alaireth as well at times. Coming home again...then, there'd been _nothing._ Nothing at all, and far too much of it for any man's sanity to bear. It hadn't taken long at all before terror had got a solid grip on his mind, and he was pretty sure that he'd have embarrassed himself like a newly-Searched candidate if he hadn't taken appropriate precautions before they'd all left. He thought that he _might_ have felt one or other of the dragons at times – before the lights and pain had begun, and his thoughts had simply stopped – but it hadn't been a comfort at all. The minds he thought he'd touched had been furiously alien, equally as terrified for their lives as himself, and screaming with a madness all of their own. Then again, he might have imagined all of it, his mind breaking down in the dark and finding the lingering nightmare scraps of Trath's own near-death experience deep in his subconscious. He didn't really want to know what the truth was...but all the same, word of Cassonth's loss hadn't come as any great surprise.

No, it was the _manner_ of it that broke his heart.

F'ren's thoughts kept on coming back to it. On the one hand, everyone who'd ever written or spoken about timing was clear in their belief that you couldn't change what _was,_ or at least not in any way that would matter. His friends had gone _between_ that day, and hadn't come out of it again. There'd been nothing to lose in trying to save them, nothing at risk except themselves. He'd genuinely believed that. If they'd failed to avert some of the tragedy of that day...well, they'd still have made a heroic attempt to heal what was, in truth, a very old grief. And if they'd succeeded? What a triumph that would have been!

How blind, how _arrogant_ they'd all been to think that!

Whatever happened, always happened. That was the way it worked, supposedly, that was what was meant to make you feel better about the past, to help you let go of it or to guide you as you tried to build a better future from it. There was no uncertainty left any more. Cassonth had always died, and he and Ormaith and Alaireth and their riders had always been there to witness his death.

To do more than merely witness it.

To cause it.

Was that where it had started? The critical moment when A'minek and Cassonth's safe visual had been ruined? Or had it been before then, when he'd agreed to guide them all back there? When Rahnis and Sh'vek had made their bargain? Or months before that, when he and Rahnis had used timing for their own ends: he to wrest the Weyr from Sh'vek's hands, and she to avert a death – one which might never have happened if Sh'vek hadn't seen M'ton as another possible rival to his power. You could take it back even further, turns earlier, to the day when he and Trath had been sent south to chase Alaireth, to keep him from winning Kiath and the Weyr. Or even earlier than that, the first time Sh'vek had turned down one of F'ren's transfer requests, or the day he'd decided to stop asking, because neither of them could bear to let the other walk away and escape from what they were doing to each other.  All those turns of hate, perpetually reinforced by Ormaith's lingering presence _between_ _..._ and all because Cassonth and A'minek had died, and F'ren had lived.

And they _were_ to blame for that, all of them. Except that they weren't, if you believed what the records told you. What the record-writer _wanted_ to believe.

F'ren didn't think he could. A'minek and Cassonth had died all over again, and this time – the only time – he truly _had_ played a part in it. The knowledge was a heavy, painful weight lodged in his chest, more personal than grief for a long-lost friend, harder and more shameful than regret. Guilt, that was the word for it.

 _It's not your fault,_ Trath said. _It_ did _always happen as it did._

F'ren stared down at the ground, at the shape he'd been unconsciously tracing into the dirt with his bad hand. No start to it, nor any end in sight...but perhaps he didn't have to live trapped inside of it any more.

Tarkan's fingers found another patch of especially raw nerves, and F'ren bit back his instinctive yelp. “You could still have some fellis,” the healer suggested. “It's not going anywhere.”

F'ren shook his head. “No. No fellis.” He deserved some proper pain, surely.

_No, you don't._

F'ren wasn't convinced, but it would hardly be fair on Trath to dull his mind with the drug right now, not when he had the better alternative of numbweed and a little patient endurance instead. He brushed the circle away, and looked over to where Ormaith lay stricken. Sh'vek was still standing rigidly beside his dragon's neck. Ever since F'sigger and O'reb had pulled him off him, Sh'vek's attention hadn't wavered from his dragon for an instant. There'd been guards set to watch him, Trath had told him, but they'd been drafted in to help with the healers' supplies some time ago, once it had become obvious to everyone that they really weren't needed. Whatever man and dragon were saying to each other – if anything at all – they were keeping their confidence close.

Sh'vek's continued lack of motion was in stark contrast to the riders and weyrfolk that were swarming on and around the dragon like sandbugs at high tide. F'sigger and one of the younger dragonhealers were perched high between his ridges, hands well gloved in wherhide while they worked numbweed into the musculature of the dragon's back. On the ground, the Weyr's engineers had been called in to lay out wooden struts and a knotted web of rope at Ormaith's side. Three supportive tripods had already been raised and roped tightly to stakes hammered into the ground. Fresh sheeting would follow, and only then would the healers start the delicate task of untangling whatever wing fabric they thought they could salvage.

It wouldn't be an easy job, not with a wing as badly damaged as Ormaith's. A larger part of F'ren than he was comfortable with was still vindictively pleased every time he caught sight of the agonising twist at the dragon's fingerjoint. One of the dragonhealers had put numbweed on it pretty early on, but that hadn't stopped it from swelling up like a gorged firelizard, and he knew that the longer it was left that way, the worse the damage would get. He hadn't asked Tarkan for details, but the fact that none of the dragonhealers had come round to deal with it properly could only mean that they were too busy dealing with even more serious injuries to the dragon's body. Rahnis was with them, somewhere out of sight. O'reb had told him she was well, that she'd come out of _between_ in much better shape than he had...but O'reb didn't _know_ her, or the details of what had happened in the past.

 _Alaireth shares your concern,_ Trath told him without prompting. _Rahnis asks my forgiveness, for letting you risk yourself. I've told her it won't happen again..._

_Faranth, no!_

_...that your hurts will soon be eased, and that if she will let you comfort her, I will consider the debt paid._

F'ren surprised himself by smiling. _That way round, eh?_ _What does she say to that?_

_Later, she says. The dragonhealers are keeping her busy, and there is still much work to be done._

_Thanks. Not that I'm likely to-_

Trath tilted his head and fixed him with one whirling eye. _You need to talk this through with someone. And so does she. If you can persuade her not to punish herself over what happened, perhaps you might even listen to your own advice._

F'ren decided it might be a prudent time to change the subject. _So. What does Pakall have her doing?_

 _Stitching,_ Trath said. _Pakall found where Ormaith was bleeding, inside. The tear is mended, and all think he will breathe better soon. The healer has treated the broken flesh with medicines, and sewn up the deep cuts he made. Now Rahnis is repairing Ormaith's hide. Alaireth says she asks whether any of our Holds have a Gather pavilion that might be large enough._

 _He can't be taken_ between _at all, can he?_ Even without the mess of scaffolding now growing beneath his broken left wing, Ormaith's journey to Ista Weyr would surely have to be made slung beneath the bellies of several queens – F'ren doubted that Ormaith would ever fly again under his own power – but with a wound that deep, it would probably be sevendays, if not months, before he made it. _Tell her that Crom has one without any central posts. It's hard to picture it without all the dancers, but I think it might be big enough._

_I've told her. Alaireth is asking Ondarth if they can visit Crom and fetch it. Ondarth's rider is pleased to be able to help._

Behind F'ren, Tarkan rose to his feet. “That seems to be all of it,” he said. He stepped forward, tongs in hand, and picked up a large square of wadded material from where it had been soaking in a dish of numbweed salve. “Bend forward, please.”

F'ren gasped as the coldness of it bit through the pain, but both cold and pain were nearly gone by the time he drew his next breath.

“Feel that?” Tarkan asked.

“Feel what?”

“How about here?”

F'ren concentrated as the healer moved around behind his back. “Was that you? My right shoulder, somewhere?”

“Tenth or twelfth time I've poked you, but it's about where the sensation ought to start again. Ho, Denna!” Tarkan called out. “Did you unload the smaller packs of bandaging yet?”

The greenrider shook her head, and stretched up to retrieve one of the few packages still suspended from Ulleth's straps “You're all done, are you?”

“With him, yes. Give the numbweed another few minutes to do its work, and then you can get a fresh dressing on him and bandage him up for me.”

“You're not doing it?” F'ren asked. There was a speculative, almost predatory look on Denna's dark face, which suddenly broadened into a wide grin. F'ren groaned inwardly; he was sharding well sure he knew what _that_ meant!

“Pakall's crew need my skills more than you do.” Tarkan crouched down beside the wash bucket, and started sanding his hands and arms clean again. “Would you prefer someone else?”

F'ren shook his head; any protest he made now would only fix her attention more firmly on him as a target. “Not if you think she knows what she's doing.”

Denna had apparently been near enough to have overheard what he'd said. “Come now, F'ren, _you_ know how good I am!” she said, far too coquettishly for his liking, as she crouched down beside him and started untying the roll of bandaging.

“At threadfighting, certainly,” he said, intentionally missing her point. “Healercraft's a different matter.” _If I catch you sniffing around Ulleth, Trath...._

_All I told her was that you could do with someone to take your mind off things._

_You did what?!_

_I take it that means you_ don't _want me to chase her when she rises?_ The bronze gave a mental chuckle. _That's a first, I think._

Trath had no right to be so amused! _Tunnelsnakes, remember?_

_Tunnelsnakes?_

_Right before Turnover. She left a sackful of.... Trath? Would you_ please _stop laughing at me? Please?_ F'ren reached out and gave his dragon's lower lip a gentle tweak. _Because you'll have me laughing as well soon, and I don't think I can take that right now._

His dragon's mind seemed to deepen as Trath focused his thoughts. _Maybe that would be good for you. Your grief honours your friend. Your guilt does not. But you should not fear letting your hold on either slip._

 _Later,_ F'ren promised. _When we're alone._

“I suppose that's one good thing about this last turn we've had,” Tarkan mused, wiping his hands dry on a fresh towel. “There's not many riders I can't trust with this level of healercraft. Especially not in your Wing.”

“We've had half the injuries of the other Wings!” F'ren protested. “And Snowfall's not _my_ Wing any more, besides.”

Denna chuckled. “Always slow to see what's right in front of him, that's our F'ren. Go on, Healer, I know my way around this one well enough.”

F'ren closed his eyes and let her get on with it. She didn't rush the job, and if her fingers did linger over long at times, at least with the numbweed he was unaware of it.

“She's staring at you, you know,” Denna said as she finished tucking in the last loose end of his bandaging.

“Rahnis?” he asked hopefully, turning to have a look.

“Well _that_ explains a lot.” Denna didn't make any attempt to hide her disgruntlement. “No, the girl you brought back with you. Ordal, or something.”

“Audrealle,” he corrected. He looked over to where Dilvith and Junkath were sitting beside one another, several lengths beyond the deep ichor-soaked gouges Ormaith had left in his wake. The older queen was looming protectively over the younger one. Weyrwoman Granatia was holding Audrealle close, but her face was indeed turned towards him. His fault or not, he couldn't help feeling responsible for the girl's plight. _Would you mind trying to bespeak Dilvith again, Trath?_

Trath unlidded his eyes, and turned his head in the queens' direction. _She doesn't want to hear me. She still doesn't think I am who I am._

_Tell her I'd like to speak to Audrealle._

_Dilvith doesn't think you're who you say you are either._

_No? We've not changed_ that _much! But she is dealing with a lot right now, I suppose._

_She says Audrealle doesn't need to speak to you. The only thing they both need is to go home again, and she'll do just that as soon as the other queens let her go._

“What?” F'ren gasped. _They_ still _think they can go home? They actually want to_ try _? Faranth, hasn't anyone told them why they_ can't _?_

 _Holshayth's rider has, and Delene, and Granatia as well. They've all spoken to her. She still doesn't believe them; she's just stopped_ telling _them that._

He couldn't imagine ever facing a jump _between_ of that length again. But to want to try it, even after being repeatedly told that it wasn't something they could survive....

 _Dilvith is braver than I am,_ Trath said.

 _No, Dilvith just doesn't understand._ F'ren got to his feet and started towards the two weyrwoman. _Tell Junkath I'm on my way, that I_ need _to talk to Audrealle. Faranth, this can't wait._

_Dilvith says that if we were really who we claim, we'd be helping them. Junkath says she's being a witless wherry, and would very much appreciate it if you can get either one of them to start seeing sense._

Audrealle pulled away from Granatia and sulkily crossed her arms. “Fine!” she snapped. “Say what you've got to say, whoever you....” Her voice trailed off into silence, and the glare she was giving him softened.

She was even shorter than he remembered, and had obviously been crying hard. Her eyes were bright against the blotched red of her complexion, but their muddy green was a long way from the deep colour he'd been expecting to see. The rest of her features were similarly adrift from how he'd always pictured her. F'ren wondered once again at the sheer idiocy of what they'd done, risking themselves _between_ using only his very fallible memory as their guide.

Wrong colour or not, there were fresh tears beading at the base of her eyes. F'ren reached out and pulled her into his arms. “Oh, Audrealle, I am so, so sorry.”

She sniffed, then pulled one of her arms up between them and rubbed her nose dry on the sleeve of her shirt. “It really _is_ you, isn't it?” she said, head bowed.

“Yes,” he whispered. “All of it's true. It's been almost twenty turns since you and A'minek were lost _between_. We learned something, recently, and thought we could use it to save you.” The lie wouldn't last forever, but she didn't need to hear the whole truth right away.

Audrealle stiffened, and shoved him away from her. “No. That's _not_ what happened. A'minek died, F'ren!” She broke out into fresh sobs, and flung herself against Dilvith's flank.

“I know.”

“That horrible woman and her horrible queen killed him and Cassonth, and she tried to kill me and Dilvith, too!”

F'ren shook his head, although she wasn't looking at him to see it. “Please, Audrealle.”

“The Weyrlingmaster didn't want to help me either!” she wailed. “All he wanted was to make Cassonth come out with him, and we were trying and trying to get home, to get all of us home, but he wouldn't let me help! We didn't know where we were any more, and _she_ was there too, fighting with Ormaith, and they both pushed us away. Dilvith thought she heard Trath, and I thought that meant we were going back to Boll, but then....”

F'ren sighed. _Show her the truth with me, Trath_ , he thought, then started to speak. “We knew there must have been something wrong with your visuals, possibly because you and A'minek were still upset about what happened between the three of us.”

She glared back at him over her shoulder. “You thought that I.... How _could_ you, F'ren?”

He carried on, not wanting to get sidetracked. “Alaireth's brought dragons back from that mistake before. We thought we could bring you out, too.” He kept the rest of the tale as simple as he could; Audrealle listened thoughtfully throughout, and by the end of it she seemed much closer to believing it all. “The thing is, Audrealle, we were wrong about _why_ it happened, but not that it _did_ ,” he finished. “You've been gone all of this time, and that's never going to change. If you try....”

“We die, don't we?”

F'ren nodded. “Yes.”

“Good girl,” Granatia said, reaching out to pat her on the shoulder. “Not been an easy day for you, I know. You stay here and talk to F'ren some more, and I'll find you some wine. Is Quaiya still leading your Lower Caverns' Aunty Wing, F'ren?”

Well that was certainly one way of putting it! “Yes, and she still flames anyone who steps out of line.”

“Then I'll fetch her too,” Granatia said, beady eyes twinkling.

A pity no-one had thought of her sooner; the old woman had always taken an interest in the weyrlings – mostly because she'd raised a good number of them – and his clutch had been no exception.

“Quaiya must be _ancient_ by now,” Audrealle murmured softly. “Twenty turns!”

“Only nineteen. And a bit.”

“Oh yes, that _really_ makes all the difference.” Audrealle drew a shuddering breath, and gulped back a fresh set of sobs. “The others...are they...?”

“From our clutch?” F'ren wished she hadn't asked.

She nodded. “Please tell me. Let me...let me.... If there's more bad news, I want to hear it today. Get it all over with.”

He supposed she'd find out soon enough anyway. “Sh'pen's still alive.” There'd been an evening, not long before she and A'minek had been lost, when they'd all drunk too much wine. There'd been a bad fall that afternoon, and for some reason he, Audrealle and A'minek had decided to come up with a list of which of their clutchmates was likely to last the longest in the Fighting Wings. The hapless bluerider had been given the longest odds of all. A shameful memory, that, but it might be reassuring to her now. “A handful of others. Avret, Jassacka, S'nell, B'risten, G'treb.”

“Is that _all_?”

This far down from their Impressions, it was probably a little better than average. F'ren shrugged. “There's Zarre too, I suppose, but she left the High Reaches about a turn after losing Granath.” She'd asked her family to take her away, leaving her baby behind. Sometimes children helped dragonless women. Sometimes, they made it worse. “She was a friend of yours, wasn't she?”

“Zarre? F'ren, we can't stand each other!”

F'ren frowned, wondering if he'd remembered the wrong greenrider. “She cried for a full sevenday after you were lost, you know. Talked about you all the time. We all did. You were missed, Audrealle, very much missed. A'minek too.”

Audrealle's chin quivered, and she choked back a sob. “She's jealous that A'minek won't...that he wouldn't look at her. That he wouldn't.... That he won't ever....” She grabbed hold of his chest and buried her face against it, and this time she didn't hold back her tears. He held her close, until they eased. “A'minek's dead,” she whispered. “Nearly _everyone_ I know is dead. My family thinks _I'm_ dead.”

F'ren stopped himself just short of telling her that she could break the good news to them herself. Most of her close relatives were probably still alive, but he didn't know for sure. _Ask someone to check on her family, Trath. Packbeast traders, on the Tillek-High Reaches route._ “I could ask one of the others to join us, if you like,” he suggested, before the girl started thinking about tracking down her family herself. “Except for B'risten; he's still off out east somewhere with the weyrlings.”

She looked up, her chin pulled sideways in an expression of uncertain distaste that jogged memories of the early days of their shared weyrlinghood that he'd long since thought forgotten: miserable hours spent gutting herdbeasts and scrubbing dragonshit off the barracks floor.

“B'risten's the _Weyrlingmaster_?” she said, sounding utterly appalled.

She was still a weyrling herself, F'ren reminded himself. The question of whose charge she'd be in might not have occurred to her until now, but it was certainly an important one, and he could understand her concern. “Not B'risten,” he said quickly, knowing she'd be glad to hear it. “R'fint's our Weyrlingmaster these days. He's a good man, good at the job.”

Audrealle gave him a blank look. “I don't remember him. I don't know _anyone_ any more. I don't even know _you_ any more.”

In truth, she was probably right. “Time changes all of us. For the better, sometimes.”

“You don't _look_ better,” she said. “You're old. And what happened to your hand?”

He gave her a wry grin. “Got too close to some thread, didn't I?”

She managed to smile weakly back at him. “ _Wheel and turn, blink and burn!_ ” she chanted in a more spirited than accurate impression of one of Sh'vek's regular chastisements from their last few months as Weyrlings.

“Must've forgotten that bit,” he joked, but the mere thought of Sh'vek had left him feeling a little bit uneasy. When he looked round, he thought he might know why. Sh'vek had finally moved from the base of Ormaith's broken wing; he was now standing by his dragon's head, tenderly stroking the brow of his dragon's half-lidded eye with one hand...and staring hatefully in F'ren's direction.

 _What's happening over there, Trath?_ he asked his bronze. _I do_ not _like the way he's looking at me right now._

 _Are you surprised?_ Trath didn't seem anywhere near as concerned as he was. _I'm not picking up much from Ormaith except pain and delirium. I don't think Ormaith's rider is seeing you at all, not with Ormaith suffering so._

_No? I'm not convinced, Trath, not convinced at all. Look, there's Rahnis – and see, he's turning to look at her now._

_Alaireth says that one of the healers brought Rahnis a message. Ormaith's rider wishes to speak to her._

_He does, does he? Tell her not to get too close to him, Trath._

_I have. She says she's not a_ complete _deadglow._

“Is she your weyrmate?”

Audrealle's question caught him completely by surprise. “Faranth, how did you-” he began, then broke off awkwardly as she shifted herself against him.

“I'm glad you found someone,” she went on in a satisfied tone. “She's very pretty, even if she is only a greenrider.”

She was talking about Denna, he realised, following her gaze. And, if he wasn't mistaken, fishing for more than merely compliments from him in response. He hadn't been experienced enough to recognise her wiles as a weyrling, but they were as clear as melt-water to him now: the angles of her hips and chin, the light pressure of her fingers, and her demure refusal to meet his eyes. Not quite the same tricks she'd used on him all those turns ago, but he obviously wasn't a mere boy any more. F'ren sighed, and shook his head. The poor girl had been cut cruelly adrift from almost everything she knew. It shouldn't have surprised him that she'd try to latch onto him, but as far as he was concerned the sooner she was settled down with the other weyrlings of this time, the better. R'fint would have his hands full with her, he was sure.

“Audra, don't. You've had a hideous time today; just focus on yourself and Dilvith for now. How is she coping?”

She shot him a hurt look. “She's still a bit confused. And very tired.”

“That will pass. Trath's been through something similar. Has anyone mentioned that your old weyr's empty right now?”

Audrealle shook her head.

“You can move right back into it, as soon as you want. I'll send someone up to sweep Dilvith's couch, and look, here comes Quaiya with Weyrwoman Granatia. She'll help you furnish your rooms properly, and sort you out with new clothes.”

“What's wrong with my old...oh.” Audrealle's face fell. “They were all given away, weren't they? It'll _all_ be different!”

“You could make a point of it, if that's a problem. Take Weyrwoman Rahnis' old weyr instead.”

Audrealle's lopsided look of distaste reappeared. “Sleep on _that_ horrible wherry's bed? Ugh!”

F'ren chuckled. “She's not _that_ bad, Audra. I'll be sure to introduce you properly, later.”

He glanced back towards Ormaith, curious about what was happening. The dragon's eyes were whirling more orange than red now; his pain must have finally started to approach a manageable level. And if Ormaith didn't need so much support from his rider.... Sh'vek was still standing by Ormaith's head, but Rahnis had sensibly stopped at the base of the dragon's neck, F'ren was relieved to see, and was talking to Sh'vek quietly. Whatever she said next must have displeased him: Sh'vek half-turned away and jabbed a hand at her accusingly.

“...did _nothing_!” was all he could make out of Sh'vek's reply. There was a flash of light from the man's lower back. Just reflected sunlight...but from _what_ , F'ren wondered?

Swearing under his breath, F'ren tried to catch another glimpse of what had to be a belt knife, but Sh'vek had already turned his back against his dragon again. _Shard it, Trath, I think he's armed!_

_Alaireth thanks us for the warning._

“Listen, Audra, there's something important I need to check. If there's anything you need that Granatia can't manage, just have Dilvith bespeak Trath.”

“You're going?” she asked, her voice cracking on the second word; her vulnerability seemed entirely genuine now.

F'ren squeezed her shoulder comfortingly. “Not far. You're a brave girl. Keep it up.”

Rahnis and Sh'vek were still arguing at low volume. The Weyrwoman had both hands raised, her skin stained a patchy red and green with redwort and ichor.

“...doing my sharding best for him!” she snapped.

“You think that makes a difference? _You killed my son!_ ” Sh'vek had one hand on one of his dragon's headknobs, and the other resting on his hip. F'ren kept a close eye on the latter as he strode closer.

Rahnis let her hands fall. “Both their visuals were sound. They were _always_ sound.” She sounded resigned, as if it wasn't the first time she'd had to say it.

“Right up until the point when they _weren't_.” Sh'vek drew himself up to his full height, and crossed his arms. “You're a _coward_ , Rahnis! You promised you'd do everything you could. You swore on the life of your own queen, and the lives of every dragon she's ever clutched. In exchange for my son, that's what we agreed. You swore, Rahnis...and you did _nothing at all_.”

“Nothing? _Nothing!”_

“We could have brought them back, if your queen had helped us from the start. A'minek and Cassonth would still be alive!”

“And Audrealle and Dilvith would be _dead,_ ” she hissed back at him. “Because of what we'd done, not through any fault of their own.”

“And instead?” Sh'vek asked in a cold, level tone. “How is _this_ better?”

His head flicked to one side, towards F'ren. The day's events seemed to have aged Sh'vek by a full decade at least. His face was stricken, and the look in his eyes implied that as much damage had been done to the man's spirit as his dragon had suffered physically. _Something_ still drove him – he hadn't lost all of his ferocity, or even most of it – but F'ren didn't think it was anything as simple as hate. He knew, F'ren decided. For all of Sh'vek's accusations, he knew what he'd done to his own beloved son, knew he'd have to live with it for the rest of his days. It hadn't broken him – yet – but he wasn't far from it.

 _Alaireth asks you to stay where you are,_ Trath said.

 _Very well._ F'ren stopped where he was, and pretended to watch the crowd of healers and engineers. The scaffolding that would soon support Ormaith's wing seemed to be almost finished. O'reb and M'arsen had replaced F'sigger on the dragon's back, where they were carefully arranging the lines that had already been tied to the cloth-covered webbing below. Pakall was shouting instructions up to them; the man looked almost as haggard as Sh'vek did.

A few seconds later, Sh'vek looked away _._ “How is any of it better?” he asked, gesturing towards the wreckage of torn flesh that his dragon's wing had become.

“Done is done,” Rahnis said. “All we can do is make the best of what we have to live with. Pakall knows his craft. Look at how well Roggolith and Noksath are doing. Or Zallackuth, or Grenbezooth. No-one ever expected-”

“Don't insult me, Rahnis,” Sh'vek snapped. “He's not flying again-”

“You don't know that.”

“He's not flying again,” Sh'vek repeated, “and every last one of us knows it!”

Rahnis ignored him. “The first stages are likely to be very painful, Pakall says. We've set up pulleys to keep the weight off the joint, but he expects to have to open it up if the tendons are to be saved at all. Alaireth and I will do as much as we can, and Delene will be with Pakall the whole while, but Ormaith will need you to focus, while that's happening.”

Sh'vek stooped to grab a wineskin from the ground beside his feet, and chucked it at Rahnis' chest. “Drink with me, Weyrwoman. Drink to your triumph, drink because your lover's still alive, drink at the sharding irony that it's _my_ dragon who's been crippled, not his.”

Beside him on the ground, Ormaith whined piteously. Minith and Alaireth both rose from where they were crouched, and even Junkath startled. “Shh, Ormaith,” Sh'vek said, turning to comfort his dragon, his eyes glinting feverishly.

This time, there was no mistaking the knife tucked into his belt. _Tell Alaireth..._ F'ren thought urgently at his dragon, but Trath cut him off.

_'Not now,' Alaireth says._

Shaking her head, Rahnis lowered the wineskin to the ground, untasted. “I have to get back,” she said, thumbing her hand at the healers stationed behind her.

Pakall saw her gesture, and called out to her. “Weyrwoman? We need you up top. Soon as possible, please.”

“On my way!” She took a step, then stopped and looked back at Sh'vek. “Sh'vek, you tried. You did everything you-”

“Not enough,” Sh'vek said softly. “Not enough to save my son. A'minek, my _only_ son...who died because his father killed him.”

He'd said it. He'd actually _said_ it.

“Do what you have to do, Weyrwoman,” Sh'vek continued. “Just don't expect me to care.”

Silently, Rahnis walked away. F'ren watched her haul herself carefully up the side of the dragon's neck, taking M'arsen's place beside O'reb, before he himself moved. “I could call Serreni over, if you think that might help,” he said as he approached Ormaith.

Sh'vek looked up at him, smiling unpleasantly. “I wondered when you'd reappear."

“Or Audrealle, even? I'm sure she'd _love_ to know we saved the wrong weyrling,” F'ren added somewhat spitefully; the look on the other man's face was really rubbing him up the wrong way.

Still smiling, Sh'vek shrugged. “Ormaith is all I need. All I have left. Thanks to you, and her.”

F'ren couldn't make sense of what he was seeing. Sh'vek's face was clouded by grief – and guilt, too, he supposed – but the smile, and the hard, driven look in his eyes...the man almost seemed _satisfied._

Ormaith flinched at something the healers were doing, and let out another quiet moan.

“Not much longer, dragon-of-mine,” Sh'vek said, but his words sounded more ominous than comforting to F'ren's ears.

 _Has his mind broken, Trath?_ F'ren asked.

_I truly do not know. But I think it may be wise to find out. Carefully._

“Whose blade is it?” F'ren demanded, striding another couple of steps towards him. “The one tucked in your belt, behind your back.”

Sh'vek raised an eyebrow. “Saw that, did you? It's the boy's. O'reb's. But I got hold of it too late to use it on you, more's the pity.” He reached behind his back with one hand and slipped the knife loose, then offered it towards F'ren, hilt first. “Give it back to him, would you? And remind Rahnis that I keep _my_ promises.”

 _Watch him,_ F'ren told his bronze. _If he makes the slightest move...._

_I will._

Cautiously, F'ren stretched out a hand and claimed O'reb's knife. Sh'vek didn't move a muscle throughout, not even the ones maintaining his unsettling smile. “Anything else, while I'm here?”

Sh'vek pointed to the wineskin, lying on the ground where Rahnis had left it. “You'll drink with me, won't you? In memory of my son? Tilga left more than enough for both of us.”

F'ren went over and picked up the skin. It was a local red from Riverbend Hold; probably a good one and not far off full, going by the stamp and the weight of it as he hefted it between his hands. But he had no stomach for drinking, not just yet. “A'minek was a good man,” he said.

“He was my boy,” Sh'vek said simply.

F'ren found grief and guilt assailing him once again. “I can't say I wish it hadn't happened like this,” he admitted, “not with Audrealle and Dilvith back with us. But I wish....” His words died away, smothered by an awareness that he was lying to himself. “No. I _do_ wish it hadn't happened like this. We never should have gone back at all.”

“Would that have made a difference, do you think?” Sh'vek asked.

All the difference in the world, F'ren suspected. If A'minek had lived, if they'd fought beside each other through the turns, as close as brothers.... Everything would have been different, then.

“Too late, now,” Sh'vek said, before F'ren could gather his thoughts close enough together to make a statement out of them. “Drink, F'ren. One drink, for my son.”

F'ren shook his head. “Later, if you'll allow it. You're right, A'minek deserves at least that much.”

“Please yourself. But I've waited long enough.” Sh'vek held out his hand, and F'ren handed the skin over to him. He raised it to his lips, and took a deep swallow. Ormaith flinched again, but Sh'vek was quick to soothe him. “Shh, Ormaith. All the pain will soon be gone, I promise,” he murmured as he caressed the dragon's eyeridge. “Don't forget my errand, F'ren!” he added, without looking up.

F'ren decided he'd get it over with, more because it would give him an opportunity to speak to Rahnis than out of any wish to do as Sh'vek asked. Leaving Sh'vek to find whatever solace he could at the bottom of the wineskin, F'ren walked back towards the healers. Rahnis and O'reb were both perched high up between the dragon's wings, still busy arranging the last of the lines to Pakall's satisfaction.

“Rahnis?” Pakall yelled. “I said left a bit more, Rahnis, not right!”

“Sorry!” she called back down. “Alaireth distracted me for a moment. Ormaith's a bit twitchy; she thinks he's anticipating it.”

F'ren smiled up at her, and with his very next stride his foot came down on something: a small object that rolled away beneath him as soon as he put pressure on it. “Shard it!” he swore, windmilling his arms as he fought to keep his balance. He looked around for the offending object, and spotted a leather vial rolling sedately away, spilling drops of a clear fluid with each revolution. F'ren dropped to a crouch and grabbed for it, thinking he might be able to stop any more of its contents from going to waste, but whatever it had held had already escaped. He turned it over and checked the stamps: the Healer Hall mark, of course, and a yellow-inked 'F' for fellis. F'ren sniffed the stopper to confirm it, then sealed the empty vial back up again. It didn't seem like much had leaked out after all: aside from a smattering of dark drip-marks, the ground was dry.

F'ren was about to chuck the vial aside when something else caught his eye: a stringy nub of purple wax, just the right size for one of the Healer Hall's seals.

The vial he was holding had been opened for the first time not far from where he was standing. It had sharding well been full, not too long ago.

And now it _wasn't_.

“He _wouldn't_!” F'ren breathed, as his mind leapt to the most hideous of conclusions. Dropping the vial, he raced back to where Sh'vek was leaning across his dragon's neck, the significantly slacker wineskin dangling limply by his side. “Sh'vek?”

F'ren grabbed the man's shoulder, expecting – hoping – to be forcefully pushed aside. Instead, Sh'vek slumped, his knees giving way beneath him as he collapsed to the ground.

“TARKAN? TILGA!” F'ren screamed, swearing at Trath in his head as he grabbed hold of Sh'vek's arm and tried to shake him awake. _Sear and scorch it, Trath, get them here quickly!_

Sh'vek's lips tightened, and his eyelids fluttered. “Go,” he whispered.

F'ren shook him again, and Sh'vek took in a ragged breath before adding, more insistently: “Away!”

Ormaith was twitching violently now. His eyes were whirled with yellows and the purple of fear, as well as the ever-present red. The healers had started to raise the dragon's wing into position. Was that all it was? Surely he wouldn't just lie there like that, if Sh'vek _had_ done the unthinkable?

_Minith, Alaireth and Linnebith hold him still so the healers can work. Alaireth asks that they not be disturbed right now, and she also tells me Ormaith's mind is troubled by fear, but that he trusts his rider. She says his rider is very focused, and helping keep him calm._

Calm? The sharding man was practically unconscious! F'ren slapped Sh'vek hard across the cheeks. “Wake up, man, WAKE UP! How much did you take?”

“Hush now,” Sh'vek breathed. “Hush now, Ormaith.”

“Shard it, Sh'vek, HOW MUCH?” F'ren repeated.

Sh'vek's mouth fell open before being drawn back into something that might have been a smile. “Enough,” he said.

F'ren took the skin from the man's hand, and raised it to his lips. He only took the smallest of sips, and instantly spat it back out again. _Fuck, Trath! Sharding fuck!_

_The healer comes!_

Sh'vek said something else; F'ren let the wineskin drop and leaned closer. “Enough for what?”

“Enough to put an end...to us all.” Sh'vek croaked with every indrawn breath, and every word he said was uttered with clear effort. “Enough to...find.”

“Find what?” F'ren asked, though he already knew the answer. _Faranth, Trath,_ _tell Alaireth to get everyone down!_ he _begged his dragon urgently. Get them clear, Trath_ , _get them all sharding clear of Ormaith NOW!_

 _But the queens say they have him under control! Ormaith's rider has him under control, Alaireth says, but...._ Trath's mind darkened with fear. _F'ren, she does not have the strength to feel his mind as clearly as I can! I show her what you see. _  
__

“Son.” Sh'vek gulped at the air again, then let it loose in a long sigh, A'minek's name a whisper upon it. His chest stilled, and didn't move again.

__Tilga comes._ _

_It's too sharding late for healers, Trath!_ F'ren didn't bother searching for a pulse; you couldn't save a man after _that_ much fellis. 

“Move it, rider!” Tilga yelled as she pushed him aside. “Fellis?” Without waiting for an answer, she yanked on Sh'vek's arm hard enough to get him flat against the ground; as soon as he was down, she immediately started pounding his chest with the heel of her linked hands.

“Too late,” F'ren whispered as Ormaith flung up his head with a heart-stopping shriek. In the distance, another dragon screamed; he thought it was Alaireth. “EVERYONE GET CLEAR!” he screamed, turning and sprinting the short distance to the base of Ormaith's wing.

The bronze staggered up onto three limbs, knocking over some of the nearer struts of scaffolding and dislodging one of the weyrfolk clinging to his neck in the process. The young man fell heavily to the ground, knocking F'ren down. Winded, F'ren saw O'reb appear on the far side of Ormaith's raised left wing, where he'd slid down from the dragon's back. F'ren didn't see what happened next, but suddenly one of the taut ropes strung overhead was on top of him. It pulled burningly fast across his bare arm, and then the dragon's entire wing was moving, dragging a tangled mess of rope, wood and fabric with it as the dragon fought to free himself from the ground.

“Weyrwoman!” someone yelled.

 _They hold him!_ Trath's mental voice was strained with the effort of aiding the queens in their attempt to stop the bronze from going _between_.

 _Where's Rahnis, Trath?_ he asked as he struggled to his feet. She'd been with O'reb, hadn't she? F'ren's vision swam, overlaid with an image of an ichor-stained bronze wing and outstretched hands clutching for a rope that was just out of reach, and the feel of feet slipping as they fought to find purchase. He looked and found the place where the dragon's wing seemed to be sagging the most, stumbled forwards and took a tight hold of the cloth supporting it. Pulling O'reb's blade from his belt, he sliced through the cloth and flesh an arm's length further down the wing, then started clawing at the fabric of the dragon's wing with the fingernails of his other hand as he fought to widen the tear.

Ormaith jerked away, screaming: a terrible expression of utter pain and loss. Pulled off his feet again, F'ren felt Trath pressing hard against the other dragon, sensed the growing fractures in the bronze's mind as self and sanity slipped away and Alaireth's desperation as she fought to hold everything together. _Hold him!_ F'ren begged his bronze as he grabbed for Ormaith's wing again. A hand met his, moved to his wrist. Rahnis' fingers were slippery with ichor; they tightened painfully on his flesh as she tried to pull herself clear. F'ren's pulse was pounding in his ears, and Trath's panic filled his mind.

_F'ren, let go! We can't hold him back!_

F'ren reached up with his other hand, fumbling to catch hold of Rahnis' clothing with his few remaining fingers. _I almost have her, Trath!_

_No! He wants to die! Let go, F'ren, please let go!_

_Not yet!_ Rahnis slid away from him again as Ormaith shifted; the dragon was screaming constantly now. But Trath and Alaireth were strong enough to keep him from going _between,_ they had to be! F'ren tried again: he found the Weyrwoman's collar and hooked his fingers beneath it, just as the alarm in Trath's mind intensified.

 _He's going!_ _No! NO! Stop him! Please!_

“ _Come on!_ ” F'ren tightened his grip on Rahnis, feeling his feet lifting from the ground as Ormaith lurched forwards and up. He could sense Trath frantically scrabbling for purchase on Ormaith's mind, tormented by the pain and madness of the dragon's bereavement. Oh Faranth, he couldn't do this, he _had_ to let go...

_Hold on, Trath's rider, I beg you, hold on!_

But F'ren's fingers were already slipping, and so was he, and so was she. She was through, falling, both of them were falling, the ground a hard shock beneath him, Trath filling his mind and Rahnis in his arms and nothing, nothing at all but the bright, sunlit sky overhead.

It hurt to breathe, but it didn't seem to matter. A deathly silence had fallen on the Weyr, and Rahnis' ragged gasping was the loudest thing he could hear. He wondered why he couldn't hear keening. There ought to be keening. Sh'vek was dead. Ormaith was dead.

_We do not mourn for such as them._

_Trath?_ F'ren closed his eyes and let Trath's mind enfold his own as the dragon drew close, wordlessly reaffirming all that had first brought them together, all that had made them one: a perfect union that would endure forever.

 _I would have let go,_ he promised his dragon, hands clenched tightly on the folds of his weyrmate's clothes. _Before Ormaith went_ between, _if I had to, I would have let go._

 _Oh, my F'ren._ Trath's voice was soft and forgiving. _My only F'ren. I know you better than that._

Through Trath's eyes, he saw Alaireth wheeling overhead. The queen landed heavily on the ground nearby, the sweep of her broad wings fanning the air into life.

Slowly, Rahnis lifted her face. “F'ren?”

She filled his name with almost as much meaning as Trath did, and made it a question that he could quite happily spend a lifetime answering. F'ren opened his eyes and smiled at her. “I'm here. Always.”

Rahnis lowered her head back to his chest again. “I know,” she whispered.

He brought a hand up to her face and brushed away her tears, knowing that he really would have to let go of her soon, if only for a while. She needed her queen, and Alaireth needed her. For the rest, he was content to wait. He had his Trath, and they both had the rest of their lives ahead of them. A life he was free to live as he wished, now, no longer trammelled by his past. He could see all his dreams made real: small, human dreams that made everything worthwhile.

To live a rich, full life, forever partnered with his Trath. To love. To be loved.

Whatever else the future held, that was enough of a gift for any man.

Spirit soaring, F'ren gazed up at the blueness of the heavens, encircled but unbounded by the seven-peaked rim of the Weyr.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that, as they say, is that. There's an epilogue to follow - a necessary one, given the crashing pace that this chapter ends on - but this is really where the main story ends. 
> 
> And I don't know about you lot, but I wept buckets with the catharsis of finishing it off. I've spent a long, long time with these characters, and it's not been an easy journey for them. Even just the act of posting it here and tweaking a couple of lines here and there... *sniff*
> 
> Ah well. It's been very, very special, sharing it with you all. I can't thank you enough for the comments and the kudos and the sheer number of hits. It means a heck of a lot to me that other people have enjoyed it in the way that you all have.
> 
> (One final note, for those that care about such things: now that Sh'vek's fate has been resolved, I can finally point you at the piece of music that I've had in my head as his musical theme throughout: Muse's Take a Bow. Great song; _terribly_ apt.)
> 
> I'll be back tomorrow for the epilogue. See you then!


	47. Epilogue

_Above the Hold the fire heights blazed_  
 _and char fell all around._  
 _Beneath the Weyr's brave fighting wings_  
 _A hardy few faced terror, grave,_  
 _but boldly stood their ground._

_This was their Hold that lay at threat:_  
 _their loves, their lives, their lands_  
 _What dreadful menace e'er could match_  
 _the fire within their sterling hearts,_  
 _the flames within their hands?_

_Against the killing clumps of thread_  
 _none faltered from their foe:_  
 _though swift and fearsomely it fell,_  
 _yea, though they might fall scored and dead_  
 _they met it, toe to toe_

_Then sky did crack, then flames did roar,_  
 _and beating wings near brushed their heads._  
 _Our holders brave let 'throwers fall,_  
 _and watched in awe the bronze above_  
 _sear all the threads that sought their deaths,_  
 _bar one, that freely fell._

_Good soil and crops and men beneath_  
 _his dragon's outstretched wings._  
 _To spare the first the last must pay_  
 _and this the man did know._

_To fly, to flame, to give their lives:_  
 _they do not shirk that call._  
 _And can a one of us deny_  
 _the honour of a rider's heart,_  
 _that dragons love, and will not part_  
 _from birth to dying day?_

_So brave, this man, to risk his bronze_  
 _in service to our Hold._  
 _So brave, to seize the Threads by hand,_  
 _to spare his dragon, and our land._  
 _To bear the score upon his flesh,_  
 _the thread that sought his dragon's death,_  
 _to hold it in the cold_ between  
 _until it was no more._

_Above the Hold the fire heights blazed_  
 _and char fell all around._  
 _Beneath the Weyr's brave fighting wings_  
 _a hardy few faced terror, grave,_  
 _but boldly stood their ground_

 

**Early Autumn, Five Turns Later, High Reaches Weyr**

  
Ankle-deep in floodwater, F'ren splashed his way back towards the Weyrling Barracks. The heavy rain that had been falling on the Weyr for six days straight still showed no sign of abating, but at least the newly-dug drainage channels finally seemed to be making a difference: both ends of the rag that had been tied to mark the flood's highest level were now clear of the water, and it looked like the barracks were no longer in any immediate danger of flooding again.

Usually, heavy rainfall was a welcome prospect for any Weyr. It kept the skies Thread-free, and for hours or even days afterwards the saturated ground would be just as inhospitable to the threads as dragonfire was. Stormclouds were a dragonrider's ally, and the unseasonably wet weather had been a boon to the Fighting Wings throughout the summer. Unfortunately, it had proved utterly disastrous for the Holders the Weyr protected: the sun-starved grapes of Tillek were small and sour; the tuber crop had been decimated by an outbreak of red-blight; mud-fever had left one in three of the High Reaches' herdstock crippled; and a landslide had swallowed a tithe-train from Nabol in its entirety, leaving no survivors, the road to the Weyr impassable, and relations with the Hold even more strained than ever.

Sensing his rider's bleak mood, Trath sent a burst of encouragement. _The rain_ will _stop eventually_.

 _We've both been saying that for days now_ , F'ren reminded him.

_That doesn't make us wrong, F'ren. Everything will be back the way it should be sooner or later._

The dragon's sentiment was accurate, but even as soon as the very next day wouldn't be anywhere near soon enough. The hostile weather had already claimed too many lives, and all the signs pointed to a hard winter for the entire north-west. The Weyrfolk were likely to escape the worst of the shortages ahead, but the Holders wouldn't be as lucky. Even if the Fighting Wings seared every last Thread in the sky from then until Turnover it wouldn't make up for the ruined harvest. No dragon could flame hunger and privation away.

 _You've not heard anything else from Mannifeth yet, have you?_ he asked his dragon. _Shard it, I don't know what we'll do if Rahnis was wrong about that record._ The Weyr had every right to demand that Nabol replace its lost tithe in full, but F'ren wasn't keen on the idea of _telling_ Lord Grad that. The Hold didn't have enough supplies in reserve to last the winter, let alone support the Weyr, and the other Holds that looked to the High Reaches were almost as badly off. They certainly weren't in any position to cover the Weyr's shortfall.

_I'd have told you if I had. I think they're still searching Ista's archives._

_Think? Have you been dozing again?_

Trath sent a wordless expression of warm, dry comfort back at him, then yawned very deliberately. _I won't have much time for it later, will I? Not if we're off to Nabol again._

 _No, I suppose not._ The sweep riders had reported even worse conditions over Nabol than those over the Weyr. Smiling to himself, F'ren pushed open the barracks door. _Enjoy it while you can, Trath!_

The weyrling barracks were only dimly lit – a courtesy to the exhausted day-old dragonets and their newly-chosen riders – but after the darkness of the rainstorm outside, F'ren's eyes needed next to no time to adjust. He pushed back his rain-hood and shook the water out of his coat collar. A handful of the dragonets had left the comfort of their couches, to be oiled or fed or simply to explore their new home, but the vast majority were still sleeping off the excitement of the previous night's evacuation...or maybe just their last meal, going by the roundness of their bellies. H'koll was at the far end of the room with his back to the door, giving several of the Hold-bred weyrlings his usual lesson on the fundamentals of dragoncare – there were always one or two candidates who arrived too late to be instructed in the basics _before_ they Impressed. The rest were variously lazing about, attending to their dragons' needs, or working off their misdemeanours with scrubbing brushes – but there appeared to be only two weyrlings in the latter category, F'ren was pleased to see. The young bronzerider scrubbing the floor paused in his work long enough to look up and identify F'ren, then set back to his cleaning with renewed vigour.

“Weyrlingmaster!” F'ren called out.

H'koll raised a hand in acknowledgement. “Be with you soon, Weyrleader,” he said, but he didn't turn around until he'd finished making his point to the weyrlings. Leaving them to put his instructions into practice, H'koll walked briskly across the room to join F'ren beside the door, treading carefully on the wet floor. “Good news or bad?” he asked quietly.

“Well, it's still raining...”

“So I see,” H'koll said, eyeing F'ren's muddy boots and the growing puddle of water growing beneath them. “What about the flooding?”

“All under control for now. Oljan will be in to give you a proper report when he's finished outside. The sandbag team still have some more shoring up to do, but the trenches seem to be working.”

“Now that _is_ good news.” H'koll grinned, his relief obvious. “Larro have anything to do with them?”

“Who else?” Larro had been left standing at every clutch he'd been presented at as a lad, but his Smithcraft training had made all the difference over the last few hours. It was a shame that more of the apprenticed weyrfolk hadn't returned to the Weyr, but there was no doubting the worth of those that had. “He's already laid claim to the repairs to the tithe road for his Mastery assessment, apparently.”

“Oh? He told _me_ he wanted to demolish the barracks and excavate a new one out of the mountainside.”

F'ren hadn't heard that scheme of Larro's before, but perhaps that wasn't all that surprising: the Journeyman Smith came up with four or five new ones every other day. “Can't fault his ambition, but he'll have to wait until after the Pass for that one.”

“Aye, that's what I said, too...just not so nicely. Klah?”

F'ren shook his head. “Can't spare the time. Rahnis wants me off to Nabol this afternoon.” And if the document the Istans were looking for couldn't be found, or if it wasn't as useful as Rahnis remembered, he'd be going as the bearer of yet more bad news for Nabol's Lord. It was an unpleasant prospect and F'ren was reluctant to dwell on it further. He quickly changed the subject. “The weyrlings seem to be doing well, considering.”

H'koll rolled his eyes. “That how it looks to you, eh?”

 _Ruarnoth says H'koll says you're showing your ignorance,_ Trath relayed. _She says we're lucky to be here when most of the dragonets are asleep, and luckier still that Czanath's keeping Vahath calm._

F'ren checked the young green's couch and found it empty. “You moved Clonda and Vahath?”

“Had to. They're keeping their emotions tighter now, but Vahath's still too afraid to go back to sleep. No,” he said, lowering his voice, “T'nabry's my real worry. Even more so than Gr'mander. If we're lucky, he'll adjust as well as A'kent did. If not, it'll be N'mark all over again. Or worse.”

“It's early days, H'koll.”

The Weyrlingmaster grimaced. “Yes, and that's bothering me and all. Barely a day as riders, and they were already bringing out the worst in each other even _before_ the whole barracks flooded. You just wait until Alaireth's clutch hatches! I'll have double the number of weyrlings on my hands, with this lot twice the size and likely causing me even more trouble than they are right now!”

“Alaireth's only laid eleven so far.” F'ren resisted the urge to pester Trath for an update: the first day of laying rarely found Alaireth in a good mood.

“So _far_ ,” H'koll said, throwing the caveat back at him. “It'll probably be closer to three dozen than one by the time she's finished. Shells, but R'fint warned me about clutches like these.”

“Why? They'll be able to share lessons, won't they?”

“One month's a _lousy_ age difference, especially when this clutch has so many of the heavier males.”

F'ren hadn't thought that would make that much of a difference. “I didn't think Czanath's clutch was that unbalanced. Ten greens out of twenty-six isn't-”

“Isn't bad? When nine of them Impressed girls, and I've got _four_ bronzes to worry about, and the next clutch'll hatch right when this lot is starting to get independent and pushy with their clutchmates? They might not lose control of themselves completely, even with the younger ones spilling their thoughts and emotions all over the place...Faranth, they'd probably cause me less trouble if they _did_.” H'koll sighed. “I think I'll be needing a third assistant over the winter. Or maybe some of their mothers bunking in with 'em. Shard it, but I wish-”

“R'fint would've been proud of you,” F'ren said, attempting to forestall the Weyrlingmaster's regularly-voiced doubts. “I _do_ know that much.”

“Tell me that when they've graduated to the Wings, F'ren,” H'koll said drily.

“Oh, I'm sure I will – I've done exactly that for the last three clutches, haven't I?” F'ren turned back to the door, and opened it just wide enough to look outside. The rain was still coming down just as hard as earlier. Oljan's second work crew were putting their finishing touches to the sandbag embankment that surrounded the barracks – a series of steps to make it easier to clamber over the wall itself – but F'ren couldn't see the marker-post clearly enough to make an accurate guess as to what the water level was doing.

“How's it looking out there?” H'koll asked

“Miserable, but I really do need to get going,” F'ren said, looking back over his shoulder just in time to avoid a faceful of wind-blown rain. “Weather-sweep says it should ease off by evening, but there's no sign of that happening yet. You might want to keep someone on watch until then.”

H'koll gave the weyrling scrubbing the floor a speculative look. “Hear that, Gr'mander? There're worse things you could be doing right now.”

F'ren said goodbye and pulled his rain-hood back over his wet hair, not convinced that it was really worth the bother. He couldn't decide whether walking across the bowl would leave him wetter or dryer than jogging, but at least the slower pace would offer surer footing. Keeping to the higher ground, F'ren made his route across the Weyrbowl as direct as possible. He was a little less than halfway there when Trath passed on word from the Watchdragon that Weyrleader O'reb of Ista was on his way in.

 _At last!_ F'ren sent back. _Let's hope he's bringing us some good news._

F'ren hadn't seen O'reb in person for the best part of a turn, but from everything he'd heard Ista was thriving under his leadership: the young man had been born to lead a Weyr, and these days there were few left who would deny it. Vallenka was one of them, of course. The former Weyrwoman had become increasingly bitter, especially after Weyrwoman Serreni had died in childbirth...but, fortunately for O'reb, all the influence that Vallenka had once wielded so vindictively was lost to her now, and her opinion hadn't carried any real weight in turns.

Shielding his eyes from the rain as well as he could, F'ren squinted up towards the heavy clouds. Even without the current deluge, he'd have struggled to make out the dragonweyrs half-way up the peaks, let alone the sky at rim-level. If not for Trath's awareness of the other dragons, Mannifeth could be in the sky already and F'ren would be none the wiser. A few seconds later he heard the muffled bugle of the Watchdragon. Mannifeth emerged from the clouds shortly afterwards, trailing streamers of mist above his outspread wings as he descended.

 _I've told him you'll meet him outside the Hatching Sands instead of in the meeting room,_ Trath said. _Rahnis is also very keen to hear his news, as soon as Alaireth can spare her._

_Alaireth will let us in to view the eggs?_

_She wants to lay at least one more first, but after that, yes._

F'ren smiled, in spite of the heavy raindrops striking his face. _I'm on my way._

Mannifeth landed neatly beside the overhang just beyond the hatching cavern's entrance, allowing his rider to dismount in marginally more comfortable conditions than those offered by the rest of the weyrbowl.

“Welcome back to the High Reaches, O'reb!” F'ren said as he joined him, glad of the additional shelter provided by Mannifeth's wings. The bronze's quick descent hadn't done much to spare his rider from the brunt of the weather, and O'reb looked almost as cold and wet as F'ren felt himself. “Did you find it then?”

“I think so!” the young man replied. He reached up to unbuckle a carry-sack from his riding straps, then slung it over one shoulder. “Though we had to call on Vallenka's assistance in the end. You owe me a _very_ large favour, F'ren.”

“Why, I'd have thought the familiar comforts of the North would be more than adequate recompense!”

O'reb laughed, and brushed away some of the water still clinging to the surface of his oiled wherhide coat. “If only to remind me of my good fortune in escaping them! Your hatching went well, yesterday?”

The young dragons had all found their lifemates easily and none of the candidates had done anything stupid, not like that unfortunate Nabolese girl who'd got in the way of the last brown to hatch from Alaireth's previous clutch. That made it a success in F'ren's eyes, even if he had been wrong about more than half the Impressions.

“Lord Grad's boy got one of the bronzes,” F'ren said. “Troublesome lad, but it's made his father a little happier with us. Whether that's to the Weyr's benefit or not is anyone's guess. As for the rest, H'koll thinks they look like a decent flight of weyrlings, though it's hard to tell for sure when they're not even a day out of their shells. Not that we can really claim the credit for a Benden-bred clutch.” F'ren shook his head. “Shells, but they took so long to hatch, we started joking that Czanath was really an Igen queen in disguise, and the hatchlings didn't fancy the cold! If they'd taken any longer, I think Rahnis would've started cracking shells herself. Alaireth was _not_ happy about the delay.”

“Ah well, that's queens for you. How's Rahnis doing?”

“Miserably, but she doesn't have long to go now.” F'ren gestured with his head towards the hatching ground. “She's in there now, with Alaireth. Twelve eggs and counting, last I heard.”

“Think there'll be a gold egg this time round? Wissa's got some marks riding on it.”

F'ren had been hoping for one for turns, but it hadn't happened yet. Mannifeth had sired one on Alaireth, but the queen hadn't come out of her long jump _between_ unscathed, and it had sadly failed to hatch – along with four of the other eggs from that clutch. Trath hadn't even got that close, in spite of his best efforts. Unwilling to commit himself, F'ren brushed the question aside. “We'll see. You've brought the record with you? Can I take a look at it?”

“What, now? And risk them being ruined?” O'reb shook his head. “Besides, Mannifeth promised Alaireth on our way in that Rahnis would see them fir-uh!” He broke off with a gasp as a gust of wind swept a sheet of rain into both men's faces.

Mannifeth hunched over, curling his wings in an attempt to compensate for the wind, but F'ren didn't think it would offer any more than a temporary respite. He looked longingly towards the entrance to the Hatching Cavern. _Trath? Any chance of us getting out of the rain yet?_

_Not yet._

Something in Trath's mind felt clouded, as if he was holding something back. F'ren latched onto it instantly. _Trath? There's a problem?_

_The last egg was difficult for Alaireth, but she is laying another now. After that, you may both come inside while she rests._

His dragon's mind felt genuinely unconcerned, but F'ren knew the bronze had long since forgotten the details of what had happened to Carth in her laying of her final clutch. _You're sure? You're_ sure _they're all right?_

_Perfectly sure. Do not worry yourself, F'ren!_

Not worry? When his dragon didn't even remember _why_ he was so concerned? The queen might have laid the awkward egg safely, but she wasn't half way through her clutching yet, and if one of the eggs had been difficult for her it didn't bode well for the rest of them. Swallowing down his dismay, F'ren turned his attention back to O'reb. “Sorry. Trath says we'll be allowed in to escape the rain soon, just not right yet. Alaireth doesn't like to be disturbed while she's clutching.”

“That's fine, I know what's she's like. Helleath's the exact opposite: she'd have the entire Weyr in with her, watching her lay, if only they'd all fit!”

The gusting wind sent another sheet of water their way. O'reb quickly turned his back to it, giving F'ren just enough warning to raise an arm to shield his face. At O'reb's prompting, they both moved further back beneath Mannifeth's wing.

“What do the weyrlings make of all the rain?” O'reb asked.

“None of them have drowned in it...yet.” F'ren glanced back across the bowl towards the barracks. Oljan's team had finally finished their work on the wall, and there were no signs of any other immediate problems. “It was a close call, earlier.”

O'reb leaned back against his dragon's flank with a sigh. “At least it does for the threads well enough.”

“Some of them! I doubt we'll be so lucky with our next fall.”

“Tillek, somewhere?”

“Full length of the White River,” F'ren elaborated, glad of the distraction that thoughts of coming Threadfalls inevitably provided. The next one would track the steeply descending river valley right the way from Ostry Minehold, past Hold Musson, and all the way down to the juncture of the Tillek and High Reaches peninsulas. The updraughts over the winding canyon could be perilous at times, and he'd been hoping to see that particular Threadfall rained off...but with the rivers already flowing at full spate, the holdfolk would no doubt be glad to see clear skies again, even if it did ensure a thick fall of thread. Seeing O'reb wince sympathetically, F'ren decided then and there that he _would_ sent Pathya and Czanath out that way before sundown, whether the rain eased up or not, and only partly to give them a chance to familiarise themselves with the terrain before the fall.

 _Pass the word to Czanath, would you Trath?_ Coddling a goldrider did the Weyr no favours at all. Not that Pathya had ever been coddled, not in the High Reaches and certainly not back at Benden. The problem had been rather the reverse, especially after her sister had succeeded Granatia as senior. It would be good practise for her, charming the holdfolk under conditions like that, especially if her transfer was made permanent. Delene had settled in surprisingly well at Benden, and the special training she was giving the young Benden greenrider who shared her talent seemed to be the making of her at last.

The thought of Delene abruptly reminded F'ren that he hadn't yet asked after O'reb's Weyrwoman. “What about Wissa? She's well?”

“Wissa's well, and Ista thrives,” O'reb said with a smile. “She's got her hands full training Ranniarth's Narrian these days, but I think Ista will survive the Interval just fine with that pair to watch over it. Oh, and we had a new bronzerider transfer in from Igen, just this morning.”

“Oh?” F'ren prompted, wondering what it was that made a simple transfer so noteworthy.

“Sl'pol,” O'reb drawled.

F'ren started to chuckle. Sl'pol's Wumjath had caught Audrealle's Dilvith in her last two mating flights, giving Sl'pol far more legitimacy than his skills as a rider actually merited. The man was an arrogant boor with an unfathomable ability to make women weak at the knees, and he'd almost certainly had a hand in the current rumour circulating about Weyrwoman Irdana's plans for retirement. No, Sl'pol wasn't someone F'ren would trust with a Wing, let alone an entire Weyr. “What happened?”

“He got a little worse for wear at the Fort Gather, and finally made the mistake of insulting Audrealle's intelligence to her face. And then he did the same to Weyrwoman Sonaldra, but you didn't hear that from _me_. Wissa was there; she says Sonaldra chewed him up and spat him _between_ before anyone could blink. Anyway, I think Audrealle coming to her senses was just what Irdana was waiting for.”

“She's stepped down?” F'ren asked between his chuckles. “Finally?”

“We got the news right after Sl'pol and Wumjath arrived in Ista _._ And Audrealle's refusing to open Dilvith's next flight to the other Weyrs, just to flame him even more thoroughly.”

“Good for-” Feeling the touch of Trath's mind, F'ren broke off and raised a hand, warning O'reb that his attention was split. _Yes, Trath?_

_Alaireth says you can both come inside now. I've told Mannifeth as well._

_We're on our way!_ Beckoning for O'reb to follow him, F'ren made a quick dash from the shelter of Mannifeth's wing into the dry heat of the Hatching Cavern. He found Trath in a deep wallow in the sand close to the cavern's entrance; the bronze looked entirely too comfortable for a dragon who was supposed to be guarding the Sands from any unwanted intrusions. Further inside, Alaireth lay sprawled at full stretch across the sands, her heavily lidded eyes showing only the slimmest trace of blue-green colour. She certainly didn't seem unduly distressed. Her hide gleamed a bright, healthy gold, and her belly was still visibly distended by a number of unlaid eggs. The queen had banked the sand protectively high around each one of the eggs that she had already laid, but the shadows cast by the glowbaskets scattered around the cavern floor made it difficult to distinguish them from the places where the sand simply lay in heaps.

Rahnis was plodding awkwardly across the sands towards him, lips tightened against the discomfort of walking around. “You should be lying down!” F'ren called out to her as he hurried over.

“Believe me, I intend to!” she said. “Just as soon as I've heard O'reb's news.”

Moving behind her, F'ren wrapped his arms around her, placing his hands on either side of her belly. “I told you you were overdoing it,” he murmured into her hair. Beneath one hand, something small and firm pressed back at him. “And I think someone agrees with me.”

She turned her head to kiss him, then leaned back against his chest with a sigh. “It's still raining hard out there? Is the flooding-”

“All under control. I'm more worried about you and Alaireth right now. Trath said there was a problem with the last egg but one?”

 _There's nothing to worry about now,_ Trath insisted, his thoughts still taut with concealment.

“She looks well enough,” F'ren continued, “but-”

Rahnis surprised him by laughing. “A problem? Surely he didn't say that!” She tilted her head, and stared up at him quizzically. “No, she's just a bit tired. Everything else is fine. Better than fine!”

F'ren still wasn't convinced. “You're sure of that?” _No more dissembling, Trath. Just tell me what went wrong!_

“Oh, F'ren,” Rahnis said, her voice soft and thick with emotion. “Nothing went wrong!”

“Faranth!” F'ren swore. “Trath's keeping _his_ thoughts tight, and sharing mine?”

“You should listen to him and stop worrying!” she said, turning to face him. “The eggs are all fine. The last one was just...well, a little on the large side.” Smiling ever so slightly, she held his gaze, her eyes sparkling. “You're being ever so slow today, F'ren.”

Understanding came in a flash. _“_ A queen egg?” F'ren closed his eyes as the last remnants of his dragon's deception fell away, a surge of joyous pride flooding through him. _You could have just_ told _me, Trath!_

_Where's the fun in that? Besides, you should have guessed well before now. Rahnis certainly did._

_A queen egg, Trath!_ He opened his eyes again and scanned the Sands, trying to guess where Alaireth had placed it.

Rahnis' smile broadened. “You won't see it from here, but Alaireth doesn't mind you taking a look at it later. If you want to.”

“Of course I sharding want to! It's a queen egg, Rahnis!” And it couldn't have come at a better time, not with the Weyr's spirits so sorely in need of lifting. He pulled his Weyrwoman close and kissed her properly.

“A queen egg?” O'reb echoed. “Congratulations, Rahnis.”

Rahnis pulled away to greet the visiting Weyrleader properly. “O'reb, my apologies!” she said. “You look almost as soaked to the skin as F'ren is!”

“I'll dry,” he said with an easy smile. “Besides, I've had far worse company today.”

Rahnis groaned. “Not Vallenka?”

“I've already told F'ren that the two of you owe me for this!” O'reb said. He tugged his carry-sack from his shoulder, and tossed it over.

Still grinning like an idiot, F'ren fielded the thrown bag from the air left-handed without a second thought; these days, he barely needed to compensate at all. As Rahnis moved to take it from him, he raised it out of her reach. “Oh no! You can read it when you're lying down, love. Come on. Let's get you off your feet.” Passing the bag back to O'reb again, he wrapped an arm around his weyrmate's waist and steered her towards the cot that Tarkan had insisted be brought to the Sands.

“O'reb, please!” Rahnis called over her shoulder. “At least tell me I was right about what's in those records!”

“Six hides'-worth of truly ancient tithe-accounts,” O'reb said, keeping pace alongside them, “and we also found a report of a meeting between Pern's Weyrwomen of the day that clarifies some of the more ambiguous details. You'll have to get the Masterharper to confirm it and present it to the Lords, but there's definitely a precedent for one Weyr to claim tithes from the regions beholden to other Weyrs in times of crisis. Telgar Weyr claimed a part-tithe from Ista's Holds for two full turns after the third-interval wildfires, if I'm reading the ledger entries right.”

“That's even better than I remembered!” Rahnis said. “What about the Holds themselves? Can we insist that the rest of Pern supports them, too?”

“The Masterharper will know,” F'ren said quickly, before O'reb could say anything that might spoil Rahnis' optimism. The Holds might be honour-bound to support _all_ the Weyrs of Pern, but F'ren doubted that they were under any obligation to extend their charity to each other. “I'll go to the Harper Hall and speak to him this afternoon, then head directly over to Nabol afterwards. I don't want Lord Grad to get the wrong idea about us being supported by the other Holds, or that their charity will be forced on him.”

Even if the other Holds _could_ be made to share their harvests, there were other, better known precedents that the Lords Holder would already be well aware of: those that dealt with failing Holds and the means by which an incompetent Lord might be replaced. A number of Fort's multitude of blooded younger sons had married north, and Lord Polladar would be on Grad and Rethwind like wherries on a carcass if he thought he could oust either one of them in favour of a man from his own line. Still, if it came to a choice between that or Holders starving, F'ren wouldn't _want_ his Weyr supported by any Lord who would rather have opted for the latter. He wondered how Grad of Nabol would react to the news: if it would be with relief, or anger? With him, it could easily go either way.

Rahnis sat on the edge of the cot with a grateful sigh. “Oh, that _is_ better.” She gave F'ren's arm a tug, pulling him down to sit beside her. “O'reb, can we offer you the Weyr's hospitality for a while?”

“Such as it is,” F'ren added. “Rahnis' pot of klah's probably gone cold by now, but at least the sand's warm.”

“I think I'll pass,” O'reb said with a chuckle, passing Rahnis the bag of records. “Cold klah isn't half as appealing as hot sun right now, and we've warm sand aplenty at home. Besides, Mannifeth says he's put up with more than enough rain for one day! You can make it up to Wissa and me both when the eggs hatch: threadfall permitting, we'll both do our best to be here.”

O'reb quickly made his farewells and left them to peruse the records in peace. F'ren made it halfway down the first faded hide of accounts before deciding that he wasn't likely to add anything of value by reading the rest of it. Instead, he watched Rahnis read, wondering how much their child would take after her, and what aspects of himself he might see reflected back at him over the turns ahead. Would he love the child instantly, as he'd done with Trath? Or would it be something he'd have to grow into, as the child grew into him- or herself? _What do you think, Trath?_

His bronze rumbled happily. _I think you'll have to wait and see. But I do think it will change you. I think it already has. I think you will carry your responsibilities differently now. Perhaps...perhaps Rahnis and I might not have to work so hard to stop you taking needless risks._

F'ren laughed at his dragon's good-humoured complaint. _Faranth, Trath, you think half of them up yourself!_

Rahnis looked up and caught his eye. “You're both as bad as each other, don't deny it! Why Alaireth ever lets you catch us...”

F'ren leant over and kissed her, knowing full well that their mutual desire was the least of what held them together. Dragon-deep, they knew each other now. “Forgetful as a green, you are,” he teased. “And as-”

“Later!” She shifted, pulling the record he'd been reading out from where it had become pressed between them. “Anything useful in this one?”

F'ren shook his head. “Possibly? I only got partway through it, but I might have missed the salient details.” He rolled up the hide again, and set it down beside the others. “Can we do it, do you think? Get enough supplies out of the rest of Pern to see our own Holds through the winter?”

“ _Without_ resorting to raiding?”

“Who mentioned raiding?”

“Should I pretend I didn't understand that list of likely riders on your desk, then?”

“Might be wise, if you want to deny it later.” F'ren hoped that the conditions in the Holds wouldn't deteriorate so far that such a crime became necessary, but if it was the only option left....

“Well then. Hopefully I won't need to. If the other Holds won't feed Nabol freely, we can always bring a few thousand of the worst affected to live at the Weyr.” Rahnis grinned wickedly. “Or, we could send a Wing or two to live with the Holders over the winter, and have Pern support Nabol and High Reaches on that basis instead. _A weyr is where a dragon is_ , after all.” She gave him a gentle shove, and nodded towards her queen. “Go on, go and take a look at the eggs. She'll be up again soon, and you'll miss your chance.”

Smiling back at her, F'ren did as he'd been told. The fourteen eggs Alaireth had already laid were split into several distinct groups, he realised as he wove his way through them. The queen had banked the sand heavily around each one, shielding them from the cold air of outside, but the patches of shell he could see all looked perfectly normal. Pale colours swirled across the exposed surfaces, forming shapes and patterns almost too faint to be discerned. He paused beside one of them, wondering if the soft hints of blue and yellow curls would deepen into anything like the intense, jagged waves that had patterned the egg that had drawn his eye the very first time he'd stepped onto the Weyr's Sands, the egg that his Trath had hatched from. He wondered what colour it would hatch, and what sort of rider the dragon inside would need to make itself complete. They'd be out there, somewhere, living their life in complete ignorance of the dragon that was waiting for them, waiting to wake their dreams to reality.

Leaving the egg and the dragon inside to its own dreaming, F'ren continued on towards the largest mound of sand, the one closest to Alaireth herself. _That's the one, isn't it Trath?_

_Yes. Rahnis says you can move some of the sand, if you want. Would you? I'd like to see what it looks like too._

Grinning, F'ren knelt beside the egg and carefully brushed away some of the sand. The size of it alone was proof enough, but the burnished colour of the shell confirmed it beyond all doubt.

 _Well,_ he thought to Trath _. Well! Well done to Alaireth, and well done to you, too!_

He rocked back onto his heels and savoured the moment, knowing that duty would drag him away again all too soon. Fourteen eggs resting peacefully on the sands, with who knew how many more to follow. A clutch of unborn dragons waiting to begin their lives, waiting to change lives, as Trath had changed his. Not offering an easy life, not by any stretch of the imagination – they would learn and love and suffer, and some would die far too soon...but oh, how they would _live,_ with all the richness that only a dragonrider could know. And one day, they and their riders would take to the skies and fight alongside him, until the very last Threads of the Pass were seared. One day, the son or daughter he was soon to meet might fly a dragon of their own beside him, through the clear and Thread-free skies of Pern.

Carefully, F'ren scooped up enough sand to re-cover the golden egg.

It didn't hurt to dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there you have it. 
> 
> I first started writing this story way back in 2007 - the first two chapters and pieces of the next two or three, sketchy sections of some of the later chapters, and very little else. I set it aside to lie fallow for quite a while - and then when I started writing again, finishing _Those the dragons heed_ got prioritised, and I didn't pick up Regicide again until 2010. The writing ran and ran until summer last year, and I first got the beta readers involved in late 2011, when it was barely more than 50k and I didn't expect it to do much more than double that wordcount. I can't thank my beta team enough for sticking with me to the end. It's definitely a story that grew in the telling, and perhaps I could have gone back and pruned it more heavily...but the advantage of fanfic is that one is much freer to indulge oneself. Which I have done, here, quite shamelessly...but hopefully it's been just as entertaining for the rest of you as it has been for me.
> 
> Will there be more from these characters or this setting? Well, I have a handful of post-Regicide drabbles to put up, and if I get pestered with questions or prompts, the odd scene might well shake itself loose from my fingertips. No guarantees, but you're more than welcome to ask. And if anyone wants to play with this setting - or the characters - for fics/art/songs/other creations of their own, I have no problem with that at all. (Not that I expect anyone to, but the door is wide open.)
> 
> What else? Well, apparently Regicide now has [its own tvtropes entry](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FanFic/TheRegicide). Feel free to play with that, too.
> 
> Oh, and do consider giving the whole thing a re-read. Knowing what's coming does change some of the scenes quite a bit, particularly Sh'vek's.
> 
> Final words? Um... just the one, really.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> It's been a privilege to share this with you all.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic wouldn't be half of what it is without the sterling work of my team of beta readers: Faye U, Amy B and Laurie H, who all went above and beyond. The remaining flaws are all mine, and probably crept in during edits. Advance warning: this fic tops out at 290k, but it's not going anywhere, so please don't let that put you off! I'll be updating on weekends and wednesdays, keeping pace with the internal timeline.
> 
> I'd love to hear what you all think about this over-long, monster of a fic that ate my life...and I truly hope you enjoy it.


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